Irreplaceable Trust

Vistage group 1107 was full of great one-liners today. P.H. said "Trust is irreplaceable" in the context of deciding whether to accept referral revenue. It made me think about the challenge of trust. Is trust quantifiable? Or is it "on/off"? Can you trust someone alittle?

Then looking over at my bookself in my office - my thoughts returned to Stephen R. Covey's 2006 book "The Speed of Trust". Not his best book, it still had a great deal of content to ponder and is full of great quotes about trust. The economist in me enjoyed his simple formula on the Economics of Trust.

When Trust goes down, speed will go down and costs will go up. When Trust goes up Speed goes up and Costs go down. So there is economic incentive to build as much trust as possible. But that doesn't answer the question "Is Trust irreplaceable"?

Yes - without forgiveness I agree that trust is irreplaceable. Maybe P.H. was using the comment as a dogma to bring emphasis on the difficult (and for some impossible) task of forgiving and starting a new "Trust" meter to rebuild upon.

Or maybe the point is there is never a point that Trust can be 100%. That "Irreplaceable Trust" is impossible to achieve - it will always be the human condition to have doubts.