The trust dimension

Building trust is not as simple as one, two, three. Sally Bibb shows why and looks at what it means to genuinely build the foundation of trust that a company needs to be successful over the long term.

In today's financial markets, earnings account for barely more than 50 per cent of a company's market value. The other 50 per cent comes from the firm's intangibles, ie their non-physical assets.

This is according to research, by Baruch Lev, cited in the article 'Making Intangibles Tangible' in Strategic Finance, December 2006, by Ulrich, Smallwood and Sandholtz.

Ulrich et al developed what they called the 'Architecture for Intangibles' to help CEOs understand and boost their value-adding intangible assets. There are four steps to their framework:

• Keep your promises




• Create a clear and compelling strategy




• Align technical competencies




• Enable organisation capabilities

They go on to give a 'how to' list to help leaders to implement the stages of their model.