It is a greater compliment to be trusted than to be loved.
George Mac Donald

Character                  Wisdom                          Competence
Integrity                 Judgement                    Technical
Maturity                                                      Conceptual
Abundance                                                 Interdependence
Mentality   

                                                 
Almost all the work is done through relationship with people and in organizations. But what is communication like when there is no trust? It is impossible. It is like walking through the minefield. What if your communication is clear and precise, yet there is no trust? You will always be looking for hidden agenda. A lack of trust is the very definition of bad relationship.

The Speed of Trust

What is communication like when there is high trust? It is easy, it is effortless, it is instantaneous. There is nothing as fast as the speed of trust. It is faster then anything you can think about. Trust is the glue of life. It is the glue that holds organizations, cultures and relationship together.

Making and Keeping Promises
Nothing destroys trust faster then making and breaking a promise. Nothing builds and strengthen your trust more than keeping a promise you make.
Never use word promise until you are totally prepared to pay whatever price is to keep it.

Honesty and Integrity
Basketball coach legend Rick Pitino captured the principle of honesty: “Lying makes a problem part of the future; truth makes a problem part of the past.”

Trust is a highs form of motivation. Trust people, and when you do, you give a priceless gift and opportunity to others. The greatest risk of all is the risk of risk-less living.

Broken banker continues to insist on the reliability of a burned-out bank

translation from http://davydov.blogspot.com/2008/11/blog-post_17.html

Alexei Semonin, the former owner SeverInvestBank, that declared bankrupt last week, convened a press conference «to stop rumors about the reliability of the bank».

«I know that you, journalists, like sensations. However, while not distort the facts. The facts are that SeverInvestBank is one of the most reliable and innovative banks in Russia. We go from the crisis stronger than entered it all the enemies of spite. So make yourself a note. »

Here are three things to avoid

Don't let the marketing people be program managers. No offense, but I think my readers will agree that good marketing people rarely have a good enough grasp of the technology issues to design products.

Basically, program management is a separate career path. All program managers need to be very technical, but they don't have to be good coders.  Program managers study UI, meet customers, and write specs. They need to get along with a wide variety of people -- from "moron" customers, to irritating hermit programmers who come to work in Star Trek uniforms, to pompous sales guys in $2000 suits. In some ways, program managers are the glue of software teams. Charisma is crucial.

From http://www.sharenow.com/blog/elisabeth_the_third/post/add/

A functional specification describes how a product will work entirely from the user's perspective. It doesn't care how the thing is implemented. It talks about features. It specifies screens, menus, dialogs, and so on.

A technical specification describes the internal implementation of the program. It talks about data structures, relational database models, choice of programming languages and tools, algorithms, etc.

When you design a product, inside and out, the most important thing is to nail down the user experience. What are the screens, how do they work, what do they do. Later, you worry about how to get from here to there.

Sample of function specification

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/WhatTimeIsIt.html

Here are some of the things I put in every spec.

A disclaimer.

An author. One author.

Scenarios.

Nongoals.

An Overview.

Details, details, details.

Open Issues.

Side notes.

Specs Need To Stay Alive.