Building Trust Through Local Institutional Control

This week, I’m in Berlin delivering training on the importance of robust and inclusive disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy. The discussions have been insightful, but one theme keeps emerging: the importance of trust. Participants have shared real-world examples of how communities’ willingness to engage with DRR initiatives, especially those inclusive of particularly at-risk or marginalised communities, is shaped by their trust in institutions, policymakers, and each other. Without trust, even the best-designed policies risk failing at the implementation stage. Building that trust means ensuring DRR efforts are transparent, inclusive, and responsive to the lived realities of those most at risk. This reminder aligns closely with a piece I’ve had published this week on PreventionWeb, exploring the role of misinformation and trust in DRR. The piece was based on a report I launched last month (https://lnkd.in/eniYeaNM), the piece examines how misinformation doesn’t just distort public understanding of risk: it actively undermines confidence in scientific expertise and disaster governance, disproportionately affecting marginalised groups. As we refine DRR policy, we need to recognise that trust isn’t an abstract ideal, it’s a core component of effective disaster preparedness and response. Without it, the best policies remain words on a page. Building trust requires deliberate effort. Key steps include: 1️⃣ Understanding the community by analysing cultural, social, and political dynamics and engaging key leaders 2️⃣ Engaging from the start using participatory approaches and consulting diverse community groups 3️⃣ Communicating openly by providing clear, honest, and timely information 4️⃣ Ensuring inclusivity by engaging marginalised groups and avoiding reliance on elite voices 5️⃣ Delivering on commitments by following through on promises and providing regular updates 6️⃣ Maintaining long-term engagement by fostering sustained partnerships and resilience-building By prioritising trust through transparency, inclusivity, and sustained engagement, DRR efforts can become more effective, ensuring that policies translate into meaningful action for those most at risk. The link to the PreventionWeb article can be found here: https://lnkd.in/ecdZMQt7 #InclusiveDRR #LeaveNoOneBehind

I am thrilled to share our new paper: “Building and Maintaining Trust ‘Even When Things Aren’t Going Well’: Meta-Regulation Through an Explicit Psychological Contract,” just published in Public Administration Review! Using ethnographic methods, we examined how an explicit psychological contract (EPC) contributed to building and maintaining trust between a healthcare regulator and five hospital leaders, facilitating a learning-oriented, meta-regulatory approach that supports service improvement. The EPC (included in our paper) outlines the reciprocal obligations and behaviours that governed the relationship between hospital leaders and their regulator in pursuit of a shared partnership goal. Our analysis reveals how the intentional and consistent activation of this EPC fostered the development and maintenance of trust, even in the face of challenges, promoting a more collaborative approach to service improvement. Some important insights: - Traditional hierarchical regulation often leads to superficial compliance rather than genuine, sustainable improvement. - An EPC acts as a powerful tool in fostering an adaptive, reciprocal, and trust-based relationship by clearly articulating mutual obligations. -  Embedding the EPC into regular meetings focuses attention on the ‘fulfillment’ of the EPC in a routine way, which builds trust. - When a breach of the EPC occurs, one or both parties assess potential risks and benefits for trust relations, and may choose to trigger (or not) a collective discussion to understand why one or both parties failed to uphold the EPC’s obligations. Read the full paper here: https://lnkd.in/g8puKWs5 #metaregulation #psychologicalcontract #trust #improvement #regulation #healthcare #publicsector with Graeme Currie Tina Kiefer John G. Richmond PhD and @Sir Julian Hartley

Building Trust, Not Just Features: A Product Mandate for Africa’s Informal Economy. #WeeklyInsights As product managers that building for farmers, traders and last-mile users in Africa, we often get obsessed with making things users love. But in these markets, building trust is more fundamental. The truth is many users in the informal sector, like a chili farmer like Christiana in Sogakope or an aggregator like Kudus in Northern Ghana, don’t care how “delightful” your UI is if they’re unsure: • If they’ll get paid on time. • If the weather alert is accurate. • If their data will be safe from misuse. • If the promised fertilizer will arrive before planting season. In markets where formal institutions have failed and digital literacy is uneven, product trust is the entire value proposition. You are not just designing a tool. You are designing belief in a system that often hasn’t earned it yet. So what does it take to build software users trust? This framework by @Rich Diviney is incredibly helpful — the 4 elements of trust: 1. Competency – Are you capable of delivering what you say? 2. Consistency – Do you show up the same way every time? 3. Reliability – Can users count on you, especially when things go wrong? 4. Integrity – Do you honor your word, even when it’s inconvenient? These aren’t just philosophical ideals, they’re design and product management mandates. At Complete Farmer, this is how we build trust with our users: 1. Competency: Investing in research to develop crop cultivation protocols for farmers to ensure they meet international buyer demands requires lots agronomic competency and data. 2. Consistency: We learned to publish input delivery schedules publicly in community WhatsApp groups (not just in the app) because consistency builds trust in informal ecosystems. 3. Reliability: We realized showing weather forecasts wasn’t enough. We added local-language voice alerts because some farmers couldn’t read the app but still needed to trust when to plant. 4. Integrity: When a logistics delay happened, we didn’t spin it. We owned the error and called each lead farmer. Integrity meant more than shipping. For product managers in Africa, this is our challenge: Don’t just chase “delight.” Build trust through transparency, humility, and usefulness. That’s what unlocks adoption. That’s what scales. Because in the informal sector, trust is the bridge between intention and impact. Let’s build it. Thanks to Maya Horgan Famodu for inspiring this insight by introducing this framework to the Complete Farmer team today in our team meeting. #ProductManagement #TrustByDesign #Agritech #LastMileInnovation #startups #CompleteFarmer #TechForGood #UserResearch #DigitalInclusion #ProductStrategy #TechinAfrica