“Smart Trust” by Stephen Covey and Greg Link (with Rebecca R Merrill), is a book on use of trust for creating prosperity, energy and joy in a low trust world. Smart Trust is different from blind trust and distrust. Trust is the essential ingredient for better teamwork. But it is not easy. More often than not, we like others to trust us, while we not so much trusting the other. And the reverse is also true. There are certainly one or two examples in every one’s life, when one has faced colossal damage, emotional, monetary or both, by trusting another person. Con artists thrive on their ability to make others trust them blindly, and make millions, if not billions, just by simple heartless cheating.

Between Blind Trust and Distrust, there is a third alternative the “Smart Trust”, which starts at the third chapter of the book. “Knowing a great deal, is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone, but also judgement”.

Smart Trust is judgement. It is a competency and a process that enables us to operate with high trust in a low trust world. It minimizes risk and maximizes possibilities. It optimizes two key factors (a) propensity to trust and (b) analysis. The propensity to trust is primarily a matter of heart. Having high propensity to trust, is a vital dimension of Smart Trust, as long as it is combined with high analysis.

 “Trust but verify”, is the Russian proverb.

Smart trust has three elements :

1.      Opportunity : What is the opportunity ahead, what are you trusting with, what are its dimension. Grameen Bank for example trusts that all its borrower will return the money, Nexflix trusts that all its members will return the DVDs. If this basic is not there probably the business model is not there.

2.      Risk : To trust is to take a take a risk. In organization perspective to not to trust is also to take a risk. Smart Trust is to manage this risk wisely. The task is always to distribute the trust in a manner that the risk is minimised, and that will maximize the prosperity, energy and joy. We have to understand (a) possibilities of the outcome (b) likelihood of outcomes and (c) visibility of the outcome. In short what is the degree of the risk. The need of analysis will depend on the degree of the risk. For example, the need of the written routine to be followed for every process in a nuclear submarine cannot be the same as a newspaper vending machine. Still both the activities have some routine process, only the complexity differs.

3.      Credibility : Just by trusting another person, you cannot get the desired result or output from him. Credibility again has two parts (a) character and (b) competence. If a person does not have competence, even being trustworthy he cannot bring success and joy, because he cannot perform. On the other hand trusting a competent person, who lacks integrity is also not a good option, as he might turn out to be a cheater in the ultimate.

The book has many illustration and stories, to make the things lively. The action points for practising smart trusts are as follows :

a.      Choose to Believe in Trust

b.      Start with Self

c.      Declare your intent and assume positive intent in others

d.      Do what you say you are going to do.

e.      Lead out in extending trust to others.

While doing the above never forget to analyze and putting a proper framework for analysis.

One of the may accolades received by the book is from Yang Yuanqing, CEO Lenovo which says :

‘“Smart Trust” delivers ideas that are thought provoking, tools that work, and a perspective that I think is essential for survival and success on the global stage.”

The Toyota Way : by Jeffrey K. Liker.

The cover of the book carries a very simple statement, “Toyota is as much a state of mind as it is a car company”. In the foreword to the book Gary Canvis, a President in Toyota Kentucky has written, that the two pillars that support the Toyota Production System are “ Continuous Improvement” and “Respect for People”. Toyota Production System is an utopia that is every manufacturer’s dream, but it is not easy to emulate and implement. If one can understand  and adapt even a part of it, the savings will be enormous.

This book coins fourteen management principles from the world’s greatest manufacturer.

1.      Base your management decisions on a long term philosophy even at the expense of short term fiscal goals.

2.       Create Continuous Process Flow of Bringing Problems to Surface.

3.       Use Pull System to avoid over production.

4.       Leave out the Workload

5.       Build a culture of Stopping to Fix Problems to Get Quality Right the First Time.

6.       Standardize Tasks Are the First Foundation of Continuous Improvement.

7.       Use Visual Controls, so that No Problems are Hidden.

8.       Use on Reliable and Thoroughly Tested Technology.

9.       Grow leaders, who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy and teach it to others,

10.   Develop exceptional people and team who follow your company’s philosophy

11.   Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them to improve.

12.   Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation

13.   Make decisions slowly by consensus and evaluating all options, but once decided implement it very fast.

14.  Become a Learning Organization through Relentless Reflection and Continuous Small Improvements

The last two chapters of the book are most interesting. One discusses the use of Toyota Way to transform technical and service organizations. And the other is on how to build your own learning enterprise, borrowing from the Toyota way.

Toyota follows three categories of activities and monitor them :

Value Added : What is the actual transformation process core to the product or service that the customer is paying for.

Non-Value Added: What is a pure waste ? wait times, walk times, rework time and unused information.

Non-Value Added but required : inspection, control, documentation etc.

The purpose is always to minimize the second category .

The toughest and the basic challenge for companies that want to learn from Toyota is how to create an aligned organization of individuals who each have the DNA of the organization and continuously learning together to add value to the customer.

About changing culture the suggestions are :

1.       Start from the top – this may require executive leadership shakeup

2.       Involve from the bottom up.

3.       Use middle managers as change agents

4.       It takes time to develop people who really understand and live the philosophy.

5.       On a scale of difficulty, it is extremely difficult.

The ultimate object of Toyota Way is to become a lean and learning organization. That simple. !

The rest is in the book for studying yourself.

Digital Dharma by Steven Verdo

If you can read the following, you understand the phenomenal  power of human mind.

’Aoccdrrnieg to rscheerch at Cmabridge Uinervtisy ti deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are. The olny iprmoatnt tihng si taht the frist and the lsat ltteer msut be ni the rghit pclae”

Digital Dharma, by Steven Verdo is all about this power. This is a user’s guide to expanding consciousness in the infosphere.

Amit Goswami, the author of  ‘God is not Dead’ says about this book “ Vedro shows parallels between the metaphors of communication, technology and those of spirituality, I am impressed’

He takes us through the seven levels of Chakra, a Hindu concept, are as follows :

1. Root – Security – Radio Telephony
2. Pelvis – Relationships – Basic Telephony
3. Solar Plexus – Personal Power – Broadcasting, Podcasting
4. Heart – Compassion - Television
5. Throat – Communication – Peer to Peer Network
6. Third eye – Deep Seeing, and – Digital Compression, HD TV, MP3, Virtual Reality, signal coding, spread spectrum etc.
7. Divine Connection.- Wi-Fi, Global Positioning, Satellites, Grid intelligence.

He goes on to say, “ In each interaction with the infospace, we have a choice, whether to embrace the big picture and take the full spectrum of data, or to follow the path of limited input and thus limited possibility.”

The book is accordingly divided into seven main chapters:

1. The Telegraph of Aliveness
2. Reach out and Touch Someone
3. Becoming a Clear Channel Broadcaster
4. The Broken Heart of Television
5. Living in Truth on the World Wide Web
6. Seeing Deeper and Seeing Wider
7. Teleconsciousness – The Unity of Self and the Cosmos.

To quote, many see the global internet as the beginning of a true ‘global brain’; a virtual community where people of different cultures find a worldwide common language and develop new mental abilities and spiritual energies. On the other hand there are critics, who claim that television, video games and more recently web surfing have actually cut us off from each other, installed false belief and taught us to worship material goods.

This book takes us through all these, and teaches us the Digital Dharma, where we can go for self actualization for ourselves as well as for everyone else, by correctly following the Digital Dharma.

There are some dramatization and over-speak also. Consider these lines from the book :

“ When you are ready, reverse the zoom, and slowly drop down to the cellular dimension.

Visualize your core program is being held in a CD-ROM, running a few feet above your crown. Ask the light to defragment this code; imagine negative belief-system subroutines being replaced with more positive operating instructions. Imagine a golden light rewriting the code of your life to its most positive outcome.”

The most interesting and fascinating chapter is of course, Teleconsciousness – The Unity of Self and the Cosmos.

To quote, in the seventh state of Digital Consciousness, we are not only I and you, we are also the network that is connecting them. .. We can choose to remain conscious of our role as  God’s nerve system, responsible to create the universe, each time we see the other as reflection of divine.

A plus point of the book is it explains the various technologies in the world of information technology, in very simple lucid English. True to the concept of information ages, a 162 page writing has 60 pages of notes and bibliography attached to it. A reader curious enough can move through these references and notes and try to find them on the net or otherwise and enhance his knowledge.