Page 95 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

74 � mAnAgIng the moBIle workForCe

So if you want to get things done you’d better spend as much time
establishing trust as you do picking your team’s mobile device. With-
out it, your best employees will flit to other opportunities, you’ll reap
subpar performance, and your job of leading the organization will be
like trying to worry that cord you pulled out of your sweatpants back
through the belt loop, or like pushing a string up a hill. It will be
much harder than it needs to be.

` the speed oF trust ApplIed to
mAnAgIng the moBIle workForCe:
An InterVIew wIth stephen m. r. CoVey

We caught up with Stephen M. R. Covey in Dallas early one morn-
ing just before he was headed to the airport. Clearly a road warrior
himself, he was enthusiastic about discussing how the principles in
his best-selling book, The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes
Everything, pertain to leading a mobile workforce. 6
Covey, the son of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People author,
Dr. Stephen R. Covey, has a success record founded on his own ability
to build trust as the CEO of a high-performance business. When Ste-
phen was entrusted with leading the Covey Leadership Center he was
able to double sales and to increase profit by over 1,200 percent. Not
only that, during his leadership the company branched into 40 coun-
tries and increased shareholder value from $2.4 million to $160 mil-
lion. How did he do it? According to Dr. Covey, one word—trust. He
was trusted and he also offered trust to others which, Dr. Covey says,
increased performance to a level the company had never experienced
before.
The Speed of Trust shares principles of trust and behaviors that
build trust with self, in relationships, and with stakeholders. Also in-
cluded in this book, which is jam-packed with tools, examples, and
techniques, is wisdom about how to inspire trust.
Trust isn’t just something nice to do. There is an economics of