How leaders can hardwire trust into their business

Business leaders understand that trust is good for business. What they might not realize is that trust is increasingly difficult to build, easier to lose and more critical than ever to the growth prospects of the companies they lead.

Trust today is difficult to build because expectations are shifting among customers, employees, investors, suppliers and governments. It’s easier to lose because technology is creating new vulnerabilities (in cybersecurity, for example) that can undermine stakeholder trust even as it opens opportunities for value creation. Trust is more critical than ever because most companies will need to reinvent their business and operating models in the decade to come as AI, climate change and other megatrends reshape the global economy. Reinvention will only succeed if it is built on a foundation of trust.

Yet responsibility for trust is reactive and siloed. Leaders in distinct functional areas (e.g., supply chain, cybersecurity, sustainability, tax) are busy responding to the latest external event or regulation. They don’t have time or a mandate to consider whether the company is creating a robust trust architecture: data, processes and controls that enable it to deliver reliable outcomes on the issues that matter to stakeholders.

Trust therefore needs to be prioritised as a boardroom topic and considered as a core element of the company’s value creation recipe, alongside quality, efficiency and innovation. Put simply, governance of trust rests with those responsible for governance—namely, corporate boards. A new PwC report highlights how CEOs and boards can make trust a strategic, durable asset by focusing on three imperatives:

• Performance trust: enables efficient operations, confident decision-making and high customer satisfaction. It’s based on implementing systems and processes that combine reliability with agility.

• Accountability trust: enables high-quality reporting and confident communications by meeting regulatory requirements and stakeholder expectations with precision and integrity.

• Digital trust: allows companies to maximise the potential of AI and other technologies by protecting sensitive data, maintaining secure operations and using digital tools responsibly and ethically.

In practice, the three pillars are deeply interconnected. Investments in cybersecurity and responsible AI don’t protect solely against gut-wrenching breakdowns of digital trust. They can also drive performance by enabling deeper collaboration with value chain partners and adoption of AI tools.

For CEOs and boards looking to lead with trust, we recommend starting with questions in three fundamental areas:

• Which stakeholder groups will matter most to our success over the next five years, and beyond? And what outcomes do they expect from us?

• Are we reinforcing our trust architecture in the places that matter most? Or are there blind spots that could undermine confidence in our actions?

• Are we building a trust architecture simply to comply with regulations? Or are we aiming higher, using our purpose and values to guide bold, future-focused commitments and investments?