Why You Love Design from Trust. You just don’t know it yet | by Jerry Michalski | Medium

Systems with Design from Trust:

• assume most (not all) people have good intent.
• "initially feel counterintuitive, even risky...
• social: they rely on human relationships.
• appealing: once you wrap your head around them, you want more."

The discomfort is a symptom of how today's default setting is mistrust: "we’ve internalized the assumption that humans can’t be trusted... we all need to be constrained ... into doing the right thing, pretty much all the time".

Also, the idea that risk and vulnerability are negatives, when in fact "well-designed risks wake up that latent part of our humanity that wants to connect... help... do the right thing".

Poster child for this: Wikipedia, "vulnerable to vandals ... by letting anyone ... edit, because that’s also the best way to discover great collaborators."

Another example I didn't know: Netflix, where the "employee policy on things like expenses and vacations is: Act in Netflix’s Best Interests... everyone harmonizing around a principle is more effective and cheaper" than promulgating, teaching and enforcing a complicated rulebook. The "vulnerability makes employees feel that Netflix trusts them, which inspires reciprocal trust."

And if you think trust is scary, possibly risky - try "the architectures of mistrust: locks, fences, other barriers, surveillance cameras, archiving the surveillance footage, prosecuting violators…", along with the way it kills off genius.

Design from Trust is not the same as Design Thinking, which "doesn’t use trust and risk as levers". Moreover, while your DT team can create new things to be integrated into the business, "Trust is more complicated. When you bring trust into the picture... it reflects back on the organization, exposing ... where trust is broken... opportunities to reestablish trust... offers paths to change."