What Would Google Do_ - Jeff Jarvis [43]
It’s time for your identity crisis.
New Attitude
There is an inverse relationship between control and trust
Trust the people
Listen
There is an inverse relationship between control and trust
Trust is more of a two-way exchange than most people—especially those in power—realize. Leaders in government, news media, corporations, and universities think they and their institutions can own trust when, of course, trust is given to them. Trust is earned with difficulty and lost with ease. When those institutions treat constituents like masses of fools, children, miscreants, or prisoners—when they simply don’t listen—it’s unlikely they will engender warm feelings of mutual respect. Trust is an act of opening up; it’s a mutual relationship of transparency and sharing. The more ways you find to reveal yourself and listen to others, the more you will build trust, which is your brand.
Give the people control and we will use it, my first law decrees. Don’t and you will lose us. In a meeting of web 2.0 gurus at National Public Radio sometime ago, I heard David Weinberger—coauthor of The Cluetrain Manifesto, author of Everything’s Miscellaneous, and a Harvard fellow—extend that law. He may have thought of this law as his own, but I prefer to co-opt it as Weinberger’s Corollary to Jarvis’ First Law: “There is an inverse relationship between control and trust.” There’s another one of those counterintuitive lessons of the Google age: The more you control, the less you will be trusted; the more you hand over control, the more trust you will earn. That’s the antithesis of how companies and institutions operated in pre-internet history. They believed their control engendered our trust.
In the early days of the internet, some journalists dismissed new sources of information—weblogs, Wikipedia, and online discussions—arguing that because they were not produced by fellow professionals, they could not be trusted. But the tragic truth is that the public does not trust journalists. A 2008 Harris survey found that 54 percent of Americans do not trust news media, and a Sacred Heart University poll said that only 19.6 percent believe all or most news media. In the U.K., a 2008 YouGov poll found what looks like a high number who trust BBC journalists a great deal or a fair amount—61 percent—but that was down 20 points since 2003.
Trust is—no surprise—an issue with political leaders. In 2007 the World Economic Forum released a Gallup Voice of the People survey reporting that globally, 43 percent of citizens said political leaders are dishonest; 37 percent said they have too much power; 27 percent said they are not competent. Fifty-two percent of U.S. citizens said their politicians are dishonest. Business came off only marginally better: 34 percent believed business leaders are dishonest; 34 percent said they have too much power.
To co-opt Sally Field: We don’t like you. We really don’t like you.
When asked how to restore trust, a plurality of world citizens polled by Gallup—32 percent—argued for transparency and 13 percent pushed for dialogue with consumers. There is Weinberger’s Corollary in action: Open up, hand over control, and you will begin to regain the trust you have lost.
Trust the people
Before the public can learn to trust the powerful, the powerful must learn to trust the public.
I learned my lesson about trusting the people when I was a TV critic at People magazine in the mid-1980s. That was the critical moment in the history of popular culture when the remote control passed 50 percent penetration on American couches. The remote, the cable box, and the VCR reached critical mass, and together they put us in control of our consumption of media. No longer were we imprisoned on Gilligan’s Island by the bad taste of network programmers in Burbank.
At the end of a season back then, I was about to go on a CBS morning show to talk about the season’s ratings