Dear Deb #1 - Building Trust
This week’s question comes from: LeDon Brooks, VP, Business Services Hub, Schneider Electric
“How can GBS organizations build the trust required to move beyond traditional back-office roles and operate as true strategic partners that deliver enterprise-wide value?”
Dear LeDon,
Congratulations. You’ve skipped the warm-up questions and gone straight for the jugular: Trust.
Not transformation playbooks, not org charts, not technology roadmaps. Trust.
Capital T. The whole ballgame.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
GBS doesn’t run delivery models; it runs trust models.
Every true success in GBS is a trust story.
Every spectacular failure? A trust breach dressed up as an operational issue.
And let’s be honest about the nature of our work. The business happily parts with transactional, low-risk activities. But strategic, customer-adjacent, reputation-sensitive work? That only moves when leaders believe—deeply—that GBS won’t drop it, scuff it, or set it ablaze.
What must the business believe before it hands GBS anything that actually matters?
GBS understands the business. Not just the workflow diagram.
GBS tells the truth. No spin, no varnish, no “optics management.”
GBS can absorb shocks without falling apart—cycle swings, leadership churn, shifting priorities.
GBS has no side agenda. No empire-building, no fiefdoms—just the enterprise.
And how do you know when trust is truly present?
Stakeholders volunteer work—unsolicited and unprompted.
The work is higher value, not leftover operational debris.
GBS is pulled into decisions early, not post-facto to perform heroics.
GBS becomes the execution model of choice, not the backup plan used only under duress.
Now, the part no one likes to hear:
GBS doesn’t scale because it’s competent.
GBS scales because the business trusts it not to destroy the furniture.
When trust exists, scope flows and GBS becomes woven into how the enterprise truly operates.
When trust is absent, you can polish every SLA in sight and still remain trapped in transactional purgatory—wondering why nothing bigger ever arrives.
Until next time,
Deborah
