Trust Amongst Equals
What is the architecture of trust? How do you embody it and how do you preserve it?
Business would be impossible without trust. Trust amongst parties, participants and the system. The absence of trust increases the perception of risk. That alone can dissuade people from entering into certain transactions.
Think about a company like Gucci shipping a container full of goods. Once it arrives at a port, a truck driver carries it to its final destination. A truck would be carrying millions worth of goods. Imagine if this person could not be trusted?
The rich have laws to protect themselves from the poor. That forms the basis of trust.
Every employee who signed a contract with a company, hoping that the salary would be paid at the end of the month, is making a leap of faith. One has to repose trust in the system that it will do what it promises to. But do they have a choice?
Then there is at the other kind of trust. When you ask your friend to do something for you, or perhaps carry something valuable of yours.
In India, we have a large Marwari community that is known for being traders. They often trade amongst themselves. They do not issue financial instruments that are issued by banks, such as cheques. They just issue a note on a piece of paper. That note is as good as money. That trust moves things. It delivers growth to both sides of a transaction.
There is something almost sacred about trust amongst equals.
What is an employee going to do? Refuse to ever be employed? There is a sort of inevitability at work in unequal relationships. But amongst equals, it is always a matter of choice!
What is the architecture of that choice? How do you preserve it once the choice is made?
These are some of the questions that plague the Indian rural landscapes today. How do you get farmers to trust each other and work together rather than in independent units? The truth is that they are not even able to espouse trust within families, which has resulted in land being bifurcated over the generations and small-holder farming being normalised.
The government launched the Farmer-Producer Organisations (FPOs) to make them act like a cooperative. To say that FPOs have been a failure would be an understatement. You cannot incorporate your way out of an absence of trust. I have seen this with startups, and I am seeing this with farmers.
I do not know the answer to the question I pose, but finding it is a worthwhile pursuit.