So how do we know who to trust? How can we operate with high trust in a low-trust world without getting burned? And how can we extend trust wisely to people when not everyone can be trusted?

We define Smart Trust as judgment. It’s a competency and a process that enables us to operate with high trust in a low-trust world. It minimizes risk and maximizes possibilities. It optimizes two key factors: (1) a propensity to trust and (2) analysis. Simply put, Smart Trust is how to trust in a low-trust world.

While the propensity to trust is primarily a matter of the heart, analysis is primarily a matter of the mind. Analysis refers to our ability to assess, evaluate, and consider implications and consequences, including risk. As with a high propensity to trust, strong analysis is a vital dimension of Smart Trust, but it, too, must be tempered. If it’s not-if we start out with a low propensity to trust-most of us are so steeped in analysis that the analysis will color our judgment. We’ll find all kinds of reasons to not trust our boss, our reports, our partners, our customers, our suppliers, our colleagues, or even our family. The point is that analysis is necessary but insufficient and, in most cases, shouldn’t lead.

An inspiring example of exercising smart judgment in the face of great risk in a fast moving business situation involved Apple. In 2007, Ted Morgan, the CEO of an unknown location-finding technology company called Skyhook, had been trying for months to get major companies to use his technology. Then one day when Morgan checked his voice mail, he found that a caller had left the following message: “Ted, this is Steve Jobs from Apple. I’d like to talk to you about Skyhook. Call me at . . .” Thinking the message was a joke played by someone on his team, Morgan deleted it. Later that day, he told Mike Shean, Skyhook’s co-founder, “Good try, but you gave it away by pretending to be Steve Jobs. You should have said you were Scott or one of the other managers we just met at Apple.” Shean said he knew nothing about the message. When Morgan realized the call had actually been from Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple asking to meet with him, he sat up in a hurry. Morgan return ed the call and met with Jobs, and things started happening quickly. It looked as though a great deal was in the making.

Then one day, Jobs called Morgan and said that Apple had a big Macworld event coming up, that it was close to doing a deal with Skyhook, and that he wanted to model Skyhook’s technology at the event-but he couldn’t do it without Skyhook’s code. So Jobs asked Morgan to give him the code. While still on the phone, Morgan turned to his management team and whispered, “He’s wanting our code.” The immediate response of the team was “No! No! No!” Morgan said to Jobs, “Steve, as you might imagine, we’ve never given out our code. That code is our intellectual property. It’s everything we have.” Jobs replied, “I know that. You’re just going to have to trust me.” Against the advice of his team, Morgan gave Jobs the code. We later asked Morgan, “What do you think would have happened if you had said, ‘Steve, I just can’t?” He replied, “You never know. But personally, I don’t think he would have done the deal. I think Steve would have moved on.”

Instead, Jobs rewarded Morgan by personally demonstrating Skyhook’s technology at Macworld in January 2008, giving an animated explanation of how the technology worked and adding, “Isn’t that cool? It’s really cool.” Morgan called Jobs’s spotlight on Skyhook “the biggest publicity event any company can have.” Skyhook’s WPS became the primary location engine for Google Maps and other applications used by both the iPhone and iPod Touch until April 2010, and the company continues to provide location-based services for Apple as well as other technology giants such as Samsung, Motorola, Dell, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments. Its software powers thousands of mobile applications and is being used on tens of millions of devices around the globe. Morgan’s leap of trust turned out to be a huge positive game changer for Skyhook. It also affirms that although there is risk in trusting, there is often greater risk in not trusting.

Stephen M. R. Covey and Greg Link’s new book can be purchased from amazon.com
Smart Trust: Creating Prosperity, Energy and Joy in a Low Trust World

Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT.

I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple.It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking.

Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

Steve Jobs (1955-2011) gave this as his second story of his Commencement Address at Stanford University on June 12, 2005.