In the emerging Social Business Paradigm, building Trust in the currency or capital for success and money is the outcome.

1. You need to "Know Thy Self" as an individual and as business culture. You need to be very self-aware of your purpose, core-enabling principles, gifts, and goals.
2. You need to to consistently make & keep commitments to yourself and others and hold yourself accountable.

In this hyper-interconnected & transparent world, we are judged not just by our intent, but my our actions.

I have never met a "company". A company is made of real people who must come together with a common purpose to meet and overcome challenges to achieve results.

The days when the CEO and the Executive Committee of businesses can command their team to success are over. Leaders must inspire and support their team in order to make progress. We need less management and more engagement in this emerging world of social business.

Where on the income statement and/or balance sheet to you see the accounting for of "quality of relationships"? Yet, most leaders believe it is the "quality of social relationships" that determines success and financial results.

What is the Standard of Trust or the Quality of a Social Relationship?

Relationship Capital (RC) is an open-standard for the capture and measurement of made & kept-commitments and perceptions. Every relationship entity who asks will be given a Relationship Capital Account that can track their RC. They can make it public or private. Now, we have the ability to differentiate ourselves as individuals, our products, and businesses by accounting for these interactions.

We have always been judged by our behavior, but now we have the opportunity to earn RC and show the world that we are trustworthy.

What is the value of that to enabling your success in life and business?

-Rob Peters

The emerging social business world is shifting from just a mindset of purely competitive-driven markets to a more outbehave the competition mindset. It may not be self-evident to the current leadership elite across the world, but it is happening!

Tribes are forming not just across LinkedIN, Twitter, and Facebook, but across a host of social platfforms. Leadship is no longer about command & control only mindset, but of servant leadership that inspires and supports in this hyperconnected and transparent world.

The core issue of our time is the lack of trust of leaders and institutions. How do you sustain businesses and capitalism without trust. Trust too much may be dead from a B2B perspective because it just may be too risky to trust your stakeholders. Also, it is risky to trust too little. You need to trust wisely. All relationships entities (people/products/organizations) will succeed by earning trust or being consistently trustworthy! 

Leadership is earned with every kept-commitment and it is becoming more tangible with open standards for capturing & measuring an individual, product/service, or organization's Relationship Capital or RC.

Principles such as honesty, acountability, responsibility, respect, support, trustworthiness, and emotional intelligence are not just "nice to haves" in guiding business behavior. They are time-tested bedrock principles not to be gamed for the sake of short-term gain!

Leaders and successful businesses in almost every industry believe in core principles & values. They integrate results with relationships. Not results over relationships, but truly integrate them together!

I call this Relationship Capitalism.

Rob Peters

Founder, Standard of Trust

 It is very clear that in this technology enabled relationship economy that the use of the 20th century word "Management" has lost most of it's power and relevance in taking organizations to higher levels of performance.

Creating cultures that support and respect individuals and teams to out-behave  the competition is the answer.

Ideas, products, and services are rapidly re-created by the competition primarily due to the hyper-connected free flow of data and information being share across the globe.  If you nurture a Purpose-Driven culture with time-tested principles of:

• Honesty
• Accountability
  
• Responsibility
• Respect
• Support
• Trustworthiness
• Emotional Boundaries

Your teams will be self-govern themselves with higher levels of trust  and trustworthiness by capturing and growing their Relationship Capital (RC).  You will not have to spend a time and money designing, implementing, and enforcing management rules for the above principles.  

By creating and supporting a purpose-driven culture, your organization will innovate more, you will execute plans faster, and your people will be better engaged because they will be motivated by the Vision and Purpose and not with compliance and "carrots and sticks" approach of 20th management techniques that does not work in this hyper-connected and transparent social business world (As Dan Pink, world-renown author of "A Whole New Mind" and "Drive" has articulated over the past decade).

It is time that businesses begin the journey to higher levels of relationship maturity that enables higher levels of engagement and performance.

As the late & great UCLA coach John Wooden stated that his success in winning 10 straight NCAA  Men's Basketball Championships was due to Dual Commitments!

Relationships and Results

Not One Over the Other

As the global economy continues to improve, the top individual performers and even teams will not stay with firms that do not have a purpose-driven culture!

-Rob Peters

The banking industry has done great damage to it's reputation the past few years as the customer research data shows.

As banks begin to actively engage prospects and current customers on social media, developing an ethical banking game by which customers and banks (individuals, products/services, & bank organizational entities) can credit or debit
Relationship Capital (RC) is critical to rebuilding the lost trust.

Implementing more transparent interactions and transactions are important ways banks can earn Relationship Capital (RC) in this hyper-connected social business world.

The Relationship Capital (RC) that I refer to is an open standard for accounting of kept-commitments and positive perceptions by one relationship entity to another.

In order to consistently earn RC, you must have a culture that follows the following principles:

• Honesty
• Accountability
• Responsibility
• Respect
• Support
• Trustworthiness
• Emotional Boundaries

This will certainly provide a compelling & differentiated customer experience and deepen the trust of the the bank, it’s employees, and products. Also, it will help in identifying your brand advocates! 

It is not just the number of followers or Likes on social media, but the quality of the social relationship and that can be captured and measured by scoring perceptions and kept-commitments as Relationship Capital (RC) in this hyper-connected & transparent world.

Bill Gates of Microsoft fame made a profound statement a number of years ago: 

"We all need banking services, but we do not necessarily need BANKS."

As important as financial transactions are to banking business results, it is the quality of relationships that will ultimately determine the success or failure of a bank.

I predict that over the next 10 years, banks will become the most trusted industry in the world, they have to be!

-Rob Peters

We have entered an interconnected world of boundless opportunity. Today, the existing revenue streams and customer-base does not predict or guarantee future success.

The power of the individual to express their needs and market demands is a game-changer. Business leaders must do more than deliver efficient business models. This is hygiene or required as a necessary first step for creating a business of value. 21st century leaders must create and nurture a culture that inspires credibility by going the ‘Extra Mile” and “Doing The Right Thing” from the entire staff within the company and across the ecosystem.

Prediction: High performing businesses will built on principles of honesty, accountability, responsibility, respect, support, boundaries, and trustworthiness. These principles will be put into action with every “interaction” and measured by Relationship Capital (RC).

Earning Relationship Capital (RC):

Relationship Capital (RC) is an accounting of the interactions between “entities”, including people, businesses and products. Interactions include Commitments (actions) and Perceptions (thoughts and feelings). Entities earn RC by keeping Commitments and obtaining positive Perceptions. They receive a Relationship Capital Point (RCP) for each fulfilled Commitment, and an RCP, or a fraction thereof, for each positive Perception obtained. RCPs are deposited in an RC Account under the strict control of its owner entity.

The objectives of RC are to provide a common vocabulary for relationship interactions and to account for the interactions as they occur. Accordingly, RC uses a “standard-in-the-cloud” platform to enable entities to engage in interactions and capture RCPs in near real time. The platform is provided by RNIA, an independent body.

RC is radical common sense philosophy and operating model for credible success that blends the emotional with the logical with every interaction on-line and off!

-Rob Peters

The continuing trends of knowledge empowers clients/customers has now overlapped with social media.  As businesses begin to adopt social media as their platform for engaging with their stakeholders, it may be truly be the Death of the Salesman.

The short-term pressures of acquiring revenue has poisoned the relationship. Many sales professionals do not even know they are doing it because they have been behaving this way for years.

We do not live in the 20th century anymore.

If the salesperson does not earn Relationship Capital (RC) first, there is no hope of a financial transaction that results from the relationship.

Salespeople must build a credible reputation online and offline that get's them KNOWN, LIKED, TRUSTED, and REFERRED. The KLTR process. The power is now all with the customer/client with their smart phones and trusted social network.

As a salesperson, do you attract or repulse? At bit more emotional intelligence and much less push on revenue transaction. It is is not about you in order to generate sales revenue success. More push on the prospect will generate less revenue in the medium & long-term. I know this is paradoxical, but this is reality in the hyper-connected and hyper-transparent world of social business. Honestly ask yourself this fundamental question:

If the quality of your social relationships were the only evidence you could proffer in court, how would you fair?

-Rob Peters

I think there is wide-range in the quality of relationships with regards to the social connector-type.

I know a lot of connectors who are bridge-builders between people, but they themselves do not have any great interest in building deeper relationships with others.

Example:  A few years ago,  I met a hyper-connector on LinkedIN who had thousands of people on his 1st line on LinkedIN. He said did not really KNOW these people, LIKE or even TRUST. So why would he connect or refer someone? He was trying to get them to his business website for commerce and connecting was his sales channel.

But it is a dangerous path you take if you connect this way, because there is no guarantee of reciprocity if that is even your goal in the previous social example.

As a connector-type What are your values and principles you believe in? In the Standard of Trust tribal language, a connector is an individual, product, or organizational entity that consistently earns Relationship Capital (RC) by committing to connect one relationship entity to another relationship entity.

This has been a valuable service indeed, but the in this hyper-connected & hyper-transparent world, the question for the future is:

Will we need the online social-connector type or will technology replace this social bridge-builder?

-Rob Peters

We are not only interconnected today, we are hyperconnected in social business today.

Ethics training has largely failed in businesses because individual & team performance has been primarily measured by financial results.

Earning trust through Relationship Capital (RC) interactions is becoming more tangible by the day.

A person, product, and business entity that does not transparently follow time-tested principles of Honesty, Accountability, Responsibility, Support, Trustworthiness, and Emotional Boundaries will not consistently earn RC and increasing operational risk by damaging their reputation.

As we continue to recover from the Great Recession, successful organizations will be those that integrate quality of relationships with quality of results in their interactions & analytical measures. The late & great UCLA Coach John Wooden called this "Dual Commitments".

-Rob Peters

Founder, Standard of Trust

I envision a new world of trustworthiness that is more tangible for the individual, product, and business.  I decided to read the United Stated Declaration of Independence and make some suggested edits entitled:

DECLARATION OF INTERDEPENDENCE

When, in the course of economic & rapid technological events, it becomes necessary for one interconnected & technology enabled people to dissolve the traditional trusted economic & political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the perceptions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to create a new and trusted form of inter-dependent collaboration.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men & women are created equal and interconnected and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men & women, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed by consistently earning Relationship Capital (RC).

That whenever any form of government and/or economic power becomes destructive to the creation of Relationship Capital (RC), it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government and/or economic process , laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety, trust, and happiness. 

But when a long train of social relationship & economic abuses leads to a systemic failure of trust, government & economic leadership must be held to account for not practicing time-tested, open & transparent principles that builds Relationship Capital (RC) such as:

• Honesty
• Accountability
• Responsibility
• Respect
• Support
• Trustworthiness
• Emotional Boundaries

It is not just the right of free and interconnected people, it is their duty, to throw off such government & economic institutions, and to provide new guards for their future security.

-Rob Peters

A Relationship Capital (RC) Interaction is based
on the time-tested principle of accountability which rewards a
kept-commitment!

Many people the next 10 years will seek new sustainable ways to grow income and will turn away from stock investing.

Earning tangible measures of Relationship Capital (RC) by capturing RC through online social interactions will validate your reputation.  This is increasingly important to an individual’s success by attracting others to their personal and professional brands.

What Tasks, Concepts and Practices Earns You Relatioship Capital (RC)

• Active Listeniing
• Genuine Interest
• Telling Stories
• Swap Stories
• Make and keep Commitments
• Be Consistent in what we think, say, and do
• Solicit Feedback about You
  • “Matchmaking” People
  • Volunteer to Mentor
  • Volunteering Your Time
  • Providing free Coaching
  • Showing up to Meetings on-time
  • Following-Up
  • Doing What You Say
  • Saying “I do not know”
  • Asking “Please”
  • Ask another “What Their Story Is?”
  • Saying “Thank You”
  • Saying “I was thinking of you”
  • Asking “How may I be of service to you?”
  • Donating $$ to a Charity or worthy cause
  • Sending Information that would be of interest to that
    person.
  • Giving a person an authentic recommendation
  • Giving a person a “Qualified Referral”

Relationship Capital (RC) is an accounting of the interactions between “entities”, including people, businesses and products. Interactions include Commitments (actions) and Perceptions (thoughts and feelings). Entities earn RC by keeping Commitments and obtaining positive Perceptions. They receive a Relationship Capital Point (RCP) for each fulfilled Commitment, and an RCP, or a fraction thereof,  for each positive Perception obtained. RCPs are deposited in an RC Account under the strict control of its owner entity.

The objectives of RC are to provide a common vocabulary for relationship interactions and to account for the interactions as they occur. Accordingly, RC uses a “standard-in-the-cloud” platform to enable entities to engage in interactions and capture RCPs in near real time. The platform is provided by RNIA, an independent body.

The important principle here is that Relationship Capital (RC) is earned and not given to you!

Happy Holidays!

-Rob Peters