September starts next Tuesday. The summer holiday has come and gone. Though I think I missed the holiday part. And at 106 degrees today in the East Bay, it seems as if summer is trying to leave August with quite a statement.
So much has changed in the past three months, too. My youngest turned three. Celebrated 20th wedding anniversary in Mendocino, Calif. Went to Sea World, Coronado Island and Lego Land with the Family. And school started this week, with one child starting Kindergarten and the other starting 7th grade.
My wife and I took them to school. By way of contrast, my youngest had us walk her to class, hold her hand while we walked, helped her unpack her things into her desk, took a picture with her teacher and we stayed as long as we could before we were forcibly removed from the class.
My oldest told us to drop her off at the curb.
So starts the fall semester.
My youngest was walking into whole new territory. She didn't know how things worked, how the school does things (or its culture), the rules, the school's lingo (jargon), where things are located -- like the bathrooms or the lunch room and so on. Fortunately for her, most of the other kids were new as well. But some had attended the preschool that's located on the campus, so they are one step ahead of her.
She was nervous, but she was brave. She didn't cry. She smiled as we left. But she said several times that evening that she missed mommy.
My oldest, on the other hand, had no interest in having us walk her to class and all that sort of stuff. She'd been at the school since 4th grade. Many of her same friends were there. She knew the school, the system, the people, the cultural norms and so on. "Drop me off here." And off she went.
For my youngest, there was a level of trust with the situation because mommy and daddy said it's ok. Trust in us, not necessarily her new environment.
Dov Seidman, CEO of LRN, is a former client of mine in 2003 (I think) when I was at Fleishman-Hillard. It was a short-lived relationship, as we were not successful getting him in places like BusinessWeek fast enough. But, in this week's BusinessWeek, Mr. Seidman has an opinion piece (congratulations) titled Building Trust by Trusting (subscription might be required).
In the piece, he says that to build trust, you need to extend trust. I think there's some merit to his point. I just think his illustrations don't do an effective job at making the business case with hard data.
For example, he uses a doughnut shop to point out that the owner put change out on the counter so people could make their own change. He says the owner could serve customers faster and won loyalty and left customers behind. He doesn't back the story with any specific data, so it's hard to draw any conclusions from the illustration. However, he also uses Radiohead's release of their album online and letting fans decide what to pay and generating more revenue than all its previous releases. Could that be simply the band making more money because they don't have a record label to share revenue with? Not sure. He then uses a good part of the rest of the piece to talk about LRN.
There is a cost that comes in building trust. Trust is not free, it's hard work, doesn't come fast and is easily lost. Trust is the foundation of relationships, and relationships are built over an extended period of time. Successful relationships require many things, but two very important ingredients come to mind: mutual benefit and effective communication. This is true in marriage, friendships, business/customer, doctor/patient and so on.
My oldest will continue to learn the importance of building trust, extending trust and doing so by establishing foundational relationships that are mutually beneficial where effective communications abounds.
My Kindergartner will learn that too. But for now, she's just trying to get over new school jitters. I think she'll do fine.
