I spent my whole day today trying to squeeze my brain to portray the thoughts of a famous Chairman of one of the biggest conglomerate in the country. Accompanied by my caramel drink and a chipotle roast chicken sandwich, here’s what I’ve come up with.

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In light of the economic downturn, many of the companies have started to look inside their organizations on how to better manage their operations and cut costs. But related to operational efficiency, one element that is not being given much attention to is how trust is capitalized to ensure sustainability.

Too often we are inclined to tell people what they want to hear. We get the instant gratification of their approval without thought of its repercussion of how it will come back to us. Communication has been going only from top to bottom because the other direction has been influenced by individual fear of communicating with a person in a higher position. I’ve observed this to be common among our countrymen. Either we are too shy to speak up our minds or we are afraid to go against a common sentiment even if we hold valuable information that could turn the table.

With the current crisis described by some as the worst since the Great Depression, never has the need to be able to adapt instantaneously more imperative. To help in adopting a more open culture, the following recommendation may be useful in practicing transparency and candor in our workplace.

1. Start with your own behavior. Look first into your own behavior then move outward. Set yourself as a role model of how you want others to treat you.
2. Tell the truth. Avoid the impulse of just telling others what they want to hear. Look first into the authenticity of the information you hold instead of just throwing out something for the convenience of getting done with it.
3. Be consistent. Consistency makes people more trusting, even for bad news, than having someone like a salesperson who uses deception just to close a deal.
4. Encourage your people to speak truth to people in higher-ups. It’s extraordinarily difficult for people lower in a hierarchy to tell higher-ups unpalatable truths – but that’s what the higher-ups need to know, because often employees have access to information about problems that they don’t.
5. Admit your mistake and move forward. We are only human and it’s understandable that we sometimes commit mistake. But what turns this situation into a positive event is how we learn from our shortcomings and is able to move forward as a better person.
6. Have an immediate plan of action to correct your action. Translate your new found experience into something tangible. After admitting your shortcoming, have a plan of action of on how to correct it and avoid doing the same mistake.

Quoting from Charles Darwin, “It is not the strongest of species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change.“