Identify the kind of place you work at!
I am Aarihant Aaryan! Welcome to the Iron sharpen Iron newsletter,
I share my weekly homework from my startup journey, learning about human behavior, and sometimes decoding industries and business models for fun.
I can’t control my curiosity :) )
I started working very early in my life, I was fortunate to work in diverse workplaces.
A couple of weeks back when I was thinking what is the difference between a company that’s extremely successful ( success = all the team members experiencing some level of growth in monetary value or experiential value) & stagnant company
The major difference is how trust flows in the company
Most companies constantly seek trust first, instead of trusting their team first
You can't be trusted, if you don't trust first in the company -> team’s trust in management is important, otherwise the company is dead
How low-trust companies operate:
Most companies and organizations have low trust behavior which makes them micro-manage everything
In low-trust behaviour only a few people in the team are trusted with everything, if that one key person quits - the entire organization goes into paralysis mode
In low-trust companies, the management wants to know every process and every initiative and control them irrespective of their competency in that
In low-trust companies, the entire departments wait to get the approval of the senior authority, hence delaying execution and the desire of the team to do something exceptional declines - Eventually, the bottleneck is around those high-trust individuals
In low-trust companies, there are fewer bonds among the team,
In lowe trust companies, the co does things that are in the best interest of them, I.e Fixed salary deductions in the name of PIP, KPI’s
In low-trust companies, most times neither the employer nor the employee sticks to their promise
people share opinions and gossip vs ideas
In low-trust companies, the management decides what it wants for the customer without talking to the team or looking at the data
In low-trust companies the team fights among themselves to win the trust of the management, the team ends up doing things that please the management - but they were called to do things that please the customer
Disrespecting, shouting, humiliating colleagues or each other is a feature
Low trust companies eat efficiency for breakfast
How high-trust companies operate:
The company is in a pursuit to use its resources and build the team members vs using the team members to build their resources - They are never insecure about people consuming all the resources and leaving them
The company will take the leap and trust you first, companies like CRED send laptops once the candidate is hired. Best Western companies pay salaries at the beginning of the month, not the end.
I.E. pay for March on 1st March and not the end of March. Trust is earned.
And reciprocated when you do it first.
High-trust companies share the wealth with their teams since it is easy to lead a shareholder team vs salaried employees
The team constantly shares the wins and losses, everyone has the ownership mindset. One of the observations I have made is when a team member is rewarded he shares the reward with everyone on his team - that signals that the team has built a bond that is stronger than outcomes, the same behaviour can be seen in sports teams.
You are highly trusted to execute your ideas and your work is rarely checked
A great company is like the one below, where they equip their team to create more value and raise the bar, if you ever find an opportunity to work at a place like this - don’t let it go irrespective of its flaws.
Would love to know if you work in a high trust or low-trust environment - do let me know in the comments :)