More About Us

Rite-Solutions is an award-winning software development, systems engineering, information technology and learning development firm based in Middletown, RI with satellite offices in Pawcatuck, CT, Dahlgren, VA, and Washington, DC.

Connect

(401) 847-3399

1 Corporate Place, 2nd Floor
Middletown, RI 02842

News & Media

Your Second Step Toward Meaningfulness: Trust

If you’re following this series on creating an innovative climate through meaningful relationships, this post presents the second step in the relationship building process. The first step set the stage for employees to care about the company—a result of you caring first. The next step involves getting them to think about the company through trust and sharing. People can’t help you if you don’t trust them with the information they need to help you. Trusting everyone who cares about your company is a natural next step toward a more engaged employee. By sharing your quest, plans, and challenges with them, they are armed to assist you going forward. Without your trust in them, you won’t have anything more than a transactional relationship with employees (not the goal).

Early in my career had a manager tell me, “People have to earn my trust.” He was uncomfortable sharing information, like company financials. I told him, he had to earn his employees’ trust first. The same is true for you. Leadership has to open up and show that they trust the people with the “secrets” of the organization. Truth be told, they aren’t secrets anyway; they’re just things that managers don’t often share in a transactional relationship. Simple things like:

  1. What’s the plan?
  2. How are we going to get there?
  3. How are we doing so far?
  4. Where could we use some extra intellectual bandwidth?
  5. How does management grade itself on achieving their last plan?

Typically, managers like to think that this type of information is tightly confined to “need to know” personnel at the top. By the way, these are also typically the people who put the plan together in the first place. They spend a lot of time telling themselves that it’s a good plan and getting the reports to prove it. It’s all a part of the monthly management “feel-good” meetings. Why would you keep your caring employees from participating and sharing in the “feel-good” experience? If you were successful in getting them to care about the company (Step 1), wouldn’t they want to know that the company is either on-plan or needs help in some area? This is much trickier in public companies, but you have to try. As a President and EVP of a public company, I know that a meaningful relationship with employees is the last thing on a shareholder’s mind; until you illustrate how optimum people performance affects top and bottom lines. Then they listen. HR gives you people; it’s your job to optimize everyone.

The manager above is no longer with me. He thought telling employees our “secrets” would let a disgruntled employee “leak” information (such as monthly revenue and profit) to our competition. So what? Good or bad, it is what it is. Your competition can do nothing about it. Only you and all your caring employees can change the future of the enterprise.

It’s far better to get people in your organization to care how you are doing and trust them with the truth so that the next step in your transformation can be put in place. That’s the ASK step.

 

Note: This post is the second step in a blog series authored by Rite-Solutions co-founder Jim Lavoie about Simple Steps to Creating an Innovative Climate in Your Organization. The preceding post in the series An Innovative Climate Begins with Caring about Employees. The next post is Your Third Step Toward Creating an Innovative Climate: Ask.

Related Posts

Oct 04 2024

Rite-Solutions Awarded Three-Year Cyber-Physical Systems Contract by Office of Naval Research

Rite-Solutions has been awarded a three-year contract by the Office of Naval Research for...
Sep 11 2024

Rite-Solutions Receives $39 Million Contract to Design and Develop Submarine Network Monitoring and Training Systems

Rite-Solutions has been awarded a seven-year, $39.3 million contract to perform work on two...
Sep 09 2024

Two New Technologies on Display at Defense Innovation Days 2024

At Defense Innovation Days 2024, Rite-Solutions displayed two new innovations. FINDR™ monitors...
Aug 28 2024

Rite-Solutions Receives Great Place To Work® Certification for Third Year in A Row

MIDDLETOWN, RI (August 26, 2024)—For the third year in a row, Rite-Solutions has received the...
Jul 20 2024

Rite-Solutions Promotes Jonathan Tetreault to Vice President of Contracts

MIDDLETOWN, RI (July 20, 2024)—Rite-Solutions is pleased to announce that Jonathan Tetreault, a...
Tim Smith
Jun 27 2024

Rite-Solutions Announces Tim Smith as New Business Development Lead for Department of Homeland Security

MIDDLETOWN, RI (June 26, 2024)— Rite-Solutions proudly announces that Tim Smith has joined the...
Jun 12 2024

Rite-Solutions’ New ServiceNow Application riteMaintenance™ Streamlines Maintenance Workflow, Improves Repair Time

Rite-Solutions announces that riteMaintenanceTM, the company’s ServiceNow application, is...
May 15 2024

Rite-Solutions featured in The Newport Daily News

Rite-Solutions featured in The Newport Daily News

Apr 30 2024

Rite-Solutions Awarded a $10.7 Million Task Order to Support the Development of Electronic Warfare and Electronic Support Trainers

Rite-Solutions has been awarded a five-year, $10.7 million competitive Task Order from the Naval...
Apr 04 2024

Rite-Solutions Awarded $88 Million Contract, the Largest in Company History, by the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Electromagnetic Systems Department

MIDDLETOWN, RI (April 1, 2024) — Rite-Solutions was recently awarded a contract for $88.6 million...