Where Canada's private companies can start their journey to building greater trust

With a roadmap in place, trust can become both a business imperative and a sustained driver of value creation.

Canada’s private companies face an increasingly complex business landscape. Heightened competition for talent, a robust deals market and pressure to address environmental, social and governance matters are changing the dynamics between private company leaders and their employees, family members and other stakeholders.

Building trust is critical to strengthening these relationships and managing through uncertainty. Stakeholders are increasingly looking to engage organizations that consistently deliver on their commitments with clarity, openness and honesty. This may seem like a straightforward concept at first glance. But building trust is a journey. Every interaction, experience, relationship and outcome delivered is an opportunity to build—or erode—trust.

The agility of private companies is a distinct advantage when working to build trust. With fewer processes and layers of decision-making to navigate, they can tailor their commitments to the unique needs of different stakeholders. And private companies are well-positioned to explore new ideas, experiment and rapidly turn plans into action.

We see the impact in the findings of our 25th annual CEO Survey. More than half (51%) of Canadian private company executives say customers choose their products or services at least some of the time primarily because of their company’s values. That’s significantly higher than the response of public company CEOs (39%).

But building trust isn’t just about bolstering your relationships with customers. Understanding and managing trust helps your organization become more resilient, accountable and better positioned to create sustainable impact for all your stakeholders.

As a partner at PwC Canada, I’ve seen how developing our own Trust Roadmap helps us measure our actions and behaviours against our intentions and commitments. It’s also demonstrated how embarking on this journey is a significant undertaking that requires thoughtful planning.

Key steps in a private company’s trust journey

Every organization’s journey will be different. But we’ve identified several key steps that private companies can incorporate into their own roadmap:

Understand trust as it relates to your business and stakeholders

For many private company leaders, the journey to building trust starts by identifying and analyzing your key stakeholders—exploring their priorities, what trust looks like in each relationship and what you want to achieve through your interactions. You’ll likely encounter common themes as well as subtle differences across different stakeholder groups.

Your stakeholder analysis may identify:

• employees who value a career at an organization that’s working toward a clear vision and purpose
•  customers relying on you to consistently deliver on your promises
• family members affected by your exit strategies and timelines
• suppliers and service providers that require transparency to provide support should your business encounter challenges

It’s important to avoid generic or abstract statements in your stakeholder analysis. By keeping the priorities of various stakeholders specific, simple and straightforward, you’ll be in a stronger position to communicate your journey and measure progress.

Gather—and reflect on—stakeholder feedback

Reaching out to different stakeholders and discussing their perceptions of your performance in the areas that matter most to them is a key step in building trust. Listening to their assessments will help identify your company’s blind spots and how well your organization’s actions match its commitments.

These can be difficult conversations. But simply having the discussion can itself build trust when it’s accompanied by a genuine desire to use this feedback to improve and do things differently.

Implementation and measuring progress

Analyzing the feedback from your stakeholders can help identify the key trust drivers for your organization. It can also help you develop measurements to assess how well you’re doing in each area. Combined, these can help you focus your investments and actions into areas that create value for your stakeholders and help differentiate your company.

Viewing your trust journey as an iterative process allows you to regularly re-evaluate what matters most to your stakeholders and how well you’re performing. Continually identifying where you’re doing well and which areas need improvement can provide insights into how you can improve your actions and interactions across your business.

Sustaining trust

Many private company owners and founders are keenly aware of the principles and practices that contributed to their success. Building trust requires balancing that well-earned experience with an openness to innovate. Not every new idea or concept should be embraced. But reflecting on how they may affect your business can help you keep pace with evolving stakeholder expectations, learn from competitors and identify areas for experimentation.

We’ve seen private companies quickly gain momentum after embarking on their trust journey. Stakeholders see the changes reflected in an organization’s actions. Far from being a mere box-checking exercise, trust becomes embedded in a company’s culture and the way it does business. It influences the actions of the leadership team, salespeople and front-line staff, eventually spreading across every level of an organization.

When trust becomes part of your company culture, clients and other stakeholders become accustomed to your organization consistently delivering on its commitments with openness and honesty. And as your company continues on its journey, trust becomes both a business imperative and a sustained driver of value creation.

I invite you to view our Trust Roadmap and learn more about the steps we took as part of our journey. And if you’d like to discuss how to start preparing your organization’s own roadmap, please reach out to start a conversation.