A great way to measure the success of a conference is the number of times you have an “aha” moment. At blogINDIANA 2009, one comment in one presentation surpassed all the rest.

Although we’d like to say that our own session on Productivity and Blogging was the most influential, it was actually an offhand comment made by local entrepreneur Chris Baggott. As he pointed out in a blog post last year, people don’t trust blog posts attributed to top-level executives. In his presentation at blogINDIANA 2009, Baggott refined this information with data from the 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer. His words:

According to the largest PR firm in the world, people trust CEO bloggers less than ever before: down from 36% to 29%. It’s more important than ever that your employees be blogging to build trust with your customers.

This is great news if you’re trying to sell corporate blogging software; however, the Edelman report is not just about blogging, it’s about the degree to which the public trusts large organizations. One graph in particular is staggering:

Let’s highlight that figure: in America, 77% trust companies less than they did one year ago. The Edelman reports admits, “our survey did not ask why they had lost trust in companies,” but that is the essential question. Why are stakeholders becoming more suspicious of companies and CEO’s than ever before?

At Slaughter Development, we believe the essential problem to loss of trust is caused by the failure to spread authority and responsibility throughout the organization. Employees have more training, more expertise, more potential to innovate than ever before. Likewise, customers have more choices and know more about how products and services actually work. When met with the traditional, top-down, secrecy-based infrastructure of organizations, it’s no surprise that trust is in decline. Why trust a corporation or your boss when you have the feeling you could do it yourself?

Don’t get trapped in a spiral of distrust. Open up to stakeholders. Encourage individuals to take control of their own workflow and engineer their own methodologies. Show employees and customers that you trust them so that they have a reason to trust you. For more details on improving relationships through productivity and satisfaction, contact Slaughter Development. We love to help organizations achieve more with less!

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