Lore

Stakeholder Trust-Building via Direct Engagement

Earning organizational trust with functions like legal, sales, and analysts through sincere, direct one-on-one relationships — not through political maneuvering or formal process.

The canonical illustration is the eBay/Rob Chestnut relationship: proactively flagging gray-area product ideas to legal before launch, repeatedly, builds a track record of judgment that eventually earns latitude. The mechanism is the same as Bank of Trust — deposits made before you need the withdrawal — but the specific technique here is narrower: direct, recurring, sincere contact with a named stakeholder rather than a broad culture-level trust practice.

Related: Local Boundaries of Trust Despite Broader Org Dysfunction (trust can exist locally even amid broader dysfunction), Bank of Trust.