 What's more important in a relationship? Money or trust? This might sound like a silly question. Of course we need both, but seriously think about it. What comes first? What should be our priority? Does trust lead to money or is it the other way around? I'm in Oslo and Norway is not only one of the world's richest countries but just like all of the Nordic countries they also score very high on trust. And that's today's topic. The key to your future success. And by the way with relationship I mean any kind of relationship, not just like the one that you have on a personal level with your spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend, but corporations and employees or brands and consumers or governments and citizens. One might argue that well only with financial success and economic growth can we prove that we are on the right track and then people we start to trust us. Or one might argue that no no no it's the total opposite the other way around. We have to have a strong foundation of trust and then people will collaborate and we will have development and economic growth and then in the end the result will be financial success. Today is March 2019 and there are at least two things that I know we will remember when we look back from the future. Brexit and Trump it is impossible to get rid of this so no matter where you are who you are and what news source you rely on you will hear something new and something crazy or very different at least every day on the topic of Brexit and Trump. But I want to remind you that this new world of polarization and turbulence in politics did not start with Brexit and Trump. This started a long time ago. If you're a Simpson fan maybe you remember the episode called Bart to the Future Young Bart Simpson Time Travel to the Future and this was a very dystopian journey. Most things had gone wrong and the US economy was in ruins and the country was totally broke after Donald Trump as the president. In this episode aired on March 19 in the year 2000 so it is almost exactly 19 years ago today. Back then 19 years ago the creator of Simpson Dan Greenie was asked how on earth did you come up with such a silly idea. Donald Trump is the US president and his reply was well it just seemed like the logical last stop before hitting bottom. It was pitched because it was consistent with a vision that America is going insane and my point now is not to make this about politics. It doesn't matter if you're red or blue or where you are in this but you probably agree that yeah a lot of things in politics today are insane and one thing that looks quite insane is trust or rather the lack of it distrust. At the same time we heard about Donald Trump as the US president for the first time from Simpsons 19 years ago. A company called Edelman started to measure trust on a global level. They launched the Edelman trust barometer. An annual global trust survey which measures attitudes about the state of trust in business, government, NGOs, and the media and so on. 33,000 respondents in 28 countries and trust me the results are pointing towards a very interesting trend. According to Edelman we here in the democratized world are experiencing tsunami of distrust and this tsunami so far made us very wet at least four times so the first wave hit us back in early 90s with globalization and the option for big corporations to outsource any kind of activity. So to ordinary workers this meant that just because you have a job doesn't mean that you can count on it you have to fight for it otherwise it might end up somewhere else on the other side of the world maybe and of course this created a lot of stress and a lack of trust. Then in 2007-2008 you remember we had the financial crisis on Wall Street and the culmination was in September of 2008 with a bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Seven trillion dollars were well they were just gone and like so many times before the big guys didn't take the blame but ordinary people and ordinary workers had to pick up the check and pay the tab. Nine million Americans lost their jobs and the ripple effects were sort of felt all over the world so of course a lot of trust towards the financial industry just evaporated. In the last ten years we have experienced many new and scary waves in this trust tsunami. In the European Union we've had a very hard time to decide and agree on how to cope with increased immigration. Right now a lot of people are concerned about our inability to handle climate change and that crisis and then of course the last two or three years we have started to realize that with the internet and social media the world of trust is changing completely. Again it doesn't matter who you are what your position is but by now you probably realize that my answer to the question in the beginning money or trust what should be our number one priority is of course trust. This is not only my opinion there are many studies to confirm this and probably the easiest way to think of it is to to compare on a national level. I mean there are many countries that well are totally ruined and it's not because people are not focusing on money and then there are countries like this where they have both both economic growth and financial success and a high level of trust. Okay to be fair Norway have oil and not everybody have oil but there are many countries that also have a fortune of natural resources but still are ruined and very poor from a human well-being perspective and the one thing that is synonymous in all of these losers is the lack of trust a low-trust environment so people don't trust each other and of course this will be true in business as well. I mean the time where you could differentiate yourself with price or quality is just long gone. I have access to the internet so I have all the information I need out there I can compare everything. Now I want to know why why should I trust you what do you want you need to take a stand and there are already many examples of leaders who look more like activists than the business managers so you remember when they used to say that business and politics should not mix well in the future it will be the opposite business have to go into politics so that's it answer me why I should trust you and you just heard yourself tell you the key to your future success I wish you the best of luck and like always share your thoughts in the comments and hit subscribe if you want more I'll see you in the future