Trust is the new currency

In partnership with

Hi it's Jen,

As a “turnaround” leader, I've walked into a lot of struggling organizations.

Different industries, different sizes — but the same starting point for me, every time. Sit down with the teams, ask the same questions, listen for what doesn't get said.

Find the problem.
FIX the problem.

What I always found at the core of the struggle? Not bad people. Not a losing strategy. Not an insufficient budget.

A trust gap.

What’s true but (way too often) not understood, trust doesn't disappear because people are difficult or disloyal or uncommitted.

It disappears because nobody made the playbook official. Who owns what. What done actually looks like. How decisions get made when things get complicated. What success means across functions, not just yours.

When those things aren’t understood, self-preservation becomes the operating model. Over-escalate. Form a committee. Don't sign your name to anything that might get relitigated later.

Work slows. Handoffs break.

Eventually, people leave or stay and become shadows of themselves.

And then there's the biggest trust gap tell: Projects that make it to 70-80% completion.
And then stall.

They’re not cancelled. They didn’t fail.
They just silently get shuffled off to the “someday” pile.

Intermittently, these things have a way of resurfacing at a planning meeting (or when things go wrong - again - as if they’re a new strategic priority).

You've probably seen this before.

You probably know exactly what I'm talking about.

And it can strike anywhere.

I've seen it in nine-figure enterprise teams. I see it in $5M founder-led companies. Same pattern at a different scale. And the misdiagnosis is rampant — I need better people. We need a better system. I need to be more involved.

That last one, respectfully, usually makes the struggle even worse.

Here's what I've learned after two decades of walking into these rooms:

A trust gap isn’t the root cause of operational struggle.

It’s a symptom of the underlying clarity problem.

Fix the four pillars of clarity, and trust tends to follow.

1. What’s the definition of success? Across functions, not just inside yours.

2. How are decisions made? Documented, shared, not locked in someone's head.

3. Where’s the finish line? The definition of ‘done’ is defined before work starts.

4. Who owns what? With an actual name attached, not "the team."

It’s not a culture initiative.
It's how we lead with trust.

It's the way to answer a growth-limiting operating problem with a talent-optimizing operating solution.

Your next move?

Think about the initiatives in your organization currently sitting at 70–80% complete.

Pick one stalled thing - any stalled thing.
And ask your leadership team 4 questions:

• What does success actually mean here?
• Who owns the outcome?
• What does “done” look like?
• Who decides when tradeoffs are needed?

If you get different answers, you are not dealing with a motivation problem.

You are seeing the early signal of a clarity breakdown in the operating model.

P.S. The New Ambition newsletter is shifting to every other week. I'm spending more time in the field with founders, helping fix the four pillars of clarity in the wild.

Every headline satisfies an opinion. Except ours.

Remember when the news was about what happened, not how to feel about it? 1440's Daily Digest is bringing that back. Every morning, they sift through 100+ sources to deliver a concise, unbiased briefing — no pundits, no paywalls, no politics. Just the facts, all in five minutes. For free.

Read the newsletter trusted by 4.5 million fact-seekers.