Be Competent. Be Ethical.
by
Danny Quah
Apr 2023
This report is from a few weeks past but recent scenes in other nations around the world keep bringing me back:
"The Government remains the institution most trusted by people in Singapore with trust levels at a high, even as business leaders in many other countries command more trust than their political counterparts."
Digging into the Edelman Trust Barometer survey from which this conclusion derives, a two-part formula emerges: "Be competent. Be ethical."
This seems simple enough. Imagine if in all liberal democracies, elections were held only on the basis of these two qualities.
Public policy institutions might then focus on genuine challenges and get back into the solutions business.
I unpack this a bit more in https://dannyquah.github.io/2023/03/18/Talking-about-Trust-Edelman-Report