Being trusted “up to a point” is like being half-pregnant, half-married, half-unique. Trust is a bond within a relationship, a bond that can’t be broken down into smaller segments.

You can have authorisation levels and credit limits and all that stuff segmented, but I think it has nothing to do with trust. It has to do with empowerment.

I like the trust knowledge bit, but only after removing the granular bits. It is not a transfer of responsibility, but a sharing. In economic terms, I reckon we can call trust an extreme nonrival good, as Rishab Aiyer Ghosh would term it. It does not lose value when shared or replicated. In fact I would go further, trust increases the value of the trust-pair.

As we face a war for talent, trust is going to get even more important. You don’t trust me, then don’t hire me. If you trust me then trust me. Don’t play games with me.

People or organisations can be trusted but more often they are trusted to carry a transfer of responsibility either up to some certain point or absolutely only for a limited number of responsibilities. Where, therefore, is this trust knowledge stored or is it indeed necessary to store it? Trust in some way – as opposed to confidence as you have talked about previously – is in some way in connected to a transfer of responsibility from one individual or organisation to another. If we cannot define what that responsibility transfer is in some way then can we define trust?

Or is all this intellectual masturbation :)