Design from Trust: How to Build Better Futures

Getting beyond today's default setting of mistrust.

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What do the following have in common?

They all share a particular dependence on trust, an insight it took me over a decade to see and articulate, an insight that revealed why our systems feel so broken.

Unfortunately, most systems today are designed from mistrust — and it's quietly breaking our society. This is the story of a solution.

Around 2012, I had a realization that most of my longtime role models and inspirations — the people who innovated the various systems I just listed (and many more) — had several profound things in common.

First, I realized that most of my role models were contrarians. They swam against the main stream. Each of the contrarians was carrying a message difficult enough for their peers to hear that they were often marginalized or ridiculed by those peers. Their insights ran against their discipline's standing conventional wisdom: Let any worker stop the assembly line? We'll never get anything built! Give loans to people with no collateral? No way! Let any fool on the planet edit the Wikipedia? Are you nuts? Remove traffic lights? Seriously?

You see what I mean.

Then, slowly, I discovered the thread that connected their initiatives, an approach I called Design from Trust (and abbreviate as DfT). This post is a foundational exposition of DfT.

Design from Trust creates systems based on the assumption that participants are responsible and well-intentioned, rather than designing for the worst-case scenario. Most participants want to enjoy the system's benefits; some would even like to help improve it. Instead of designing systems as if everyone is potentially a bad actor, limiting everyone's behavior and discouraging them from engaging positively, DfT flips the script, and deals with the bad actors later, sometimes cleverly turning them into good actors.

More importantly, by designing in ways that give the good actors agency, responsibility, and leeway, DfT releases the genius that shows up whenever humans congregate. It takes a lot of trust to create a system that allows its participants to flow inside it to the places where they can make the most difference.

Design from Trust isn't a theory waiting to be tested. It's already working in the real world — you've probably experienced it yourself. The breakthrough isn't inventing it. The breakthrough is recognizing that these seemingly unrelated successes share a common architecture. Once you see it, you can build it anywhere.

Trust Compounds and Rebounds

Trust has countless facets, from improving interpersonal trust to building high-trust teams, using transparency to increase trust, designing the appearance of trust (why bank buildings used to have Greek columns out front and a big, visible safe inside), and revealing and fixing defects in a system to raise long-term trust (versus denying that there's anything wrong with the system).

The facet that Design from Trust focuses on is systems design as it relates to trust.

What's crazy about DfT is that redesigning systems in this way has positive effects on many of the other facets: trust compounds and rebounds. For example (returning to that first list), empowering everyone to stop the assembly line builds high-trust teams and improves product quality. Hosting Unconferences (instead of programming every moment of an event with famous speakers, fancy panels, and highly facilitated exercises) is a gesture of trust to your participants, and engages them by sharing the responsibility for the event with them. How's that for audience "engagement"? Adopting Open Source software or Workplace Democracy directly increases transparency — and trust. Addressing problems that are "higher" in a system's design can resolve "downstream" problems that resist other approaches.

Most systems telegraph their distrust through their design, through the glaring or subtle elements that tell us to stay in our lane, not question the system, or obey a signal blindly, instead of connecting with others. That starts a downward spiral, since many people treated as untrustworthy won't have many reasons to behave better. We respond to the way we are treated. Approach me looking for the best in me and I'll try to live up to your expectations; approach me as if I'm a thief or criminal and I'm likely to disconnect, or worse: fulfill the fears you have telegraphed to me.

For example, researchers at Boston University Medical Center discovered that redesigning the hospital's discharge process to assume patients wanted to get healthy but got tangled in the many details (as opposed to assuming they were not going to comply) reduced readmissions by 30 percent.

Risk is Useful 🫣

Modern design seems allergic to risk, perhaps a rational response to a very litigious society. We have ended up in a society that tries to stamp out all risks, like catching all the embers that threaten to turn into a wildfire. Except in doing so, we've created brittle systems with heightened risks. Think of playgrounds where we've removed all challenging equipment to prevent injuries, only to discover that kids who never learn to navigate risk become more prone to serious accidents later.

Instead of designing out all risks, Design from Trust harnesses some risks to engage participants and inspire them to contribute significantly to the systems' healthy functioning. For example, if pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers don't slow down, make eye contact, and pace-match through intersections, Traffic Calming fails and people get hurt. Yet people step up, figure out their roles, and traffic flows naturally. Similarly, if nobody steps forward at an Unconference and names a topic for conversation, there won't be any sessions. Yet they do step forward, and they do engage in conversations that are unusual for highly controlled events.

Leaving some risk in the system puts some responsibility for the system's success in participants' hands.

This sharing of risk and responsibility not only works, it transforms participants subtly. The shift from being an audience member to co-creating the event's content and value is a gift of agency, a thing our consumerist, command-and-control world has stolen from us.

Letting anyone edit the world's encyclopedia is a way of metaphorically leaving the key in the door, inviting people to help. It is a gesture of trust. As Wikipedia's founder Jimmy Wales puts it in his recent book about trust, "Not thinking about something you rely on is the ultimate expression of trust."

I think our souls recognize these gestures of trust and react favorably to them. Our souls are then hungry for a bit more of this elixir, but they don't know where to turn. Design from Trust is the thread that connects these systems, so we can find other systems that share these traits, and even better: so we can redesign dysfunctional systems using consistent principles.

Trust works not because people are perfect, but because agency awakens responsibility.

History

Believe it or not, my catalyst for these insights was the single word "consumer." Here's how that story unfolded for me.

I began noticing how somehow, over the past many decades and for a variety of reasons, we lost faith in humans. Then we began to design most of our institutions as if everyone was a bad actor. (The "we" I mean is complex, involving many different parties at many different times, each designing, tweaking and implementing the major systems we use every day, from education to transportation, elections, publishing, finance, and more.)

What's worse, we adapted. We got used to it. We take mistrust completely for granted now. We've normalized it so thoroughly that mistrust is our default setting and we're startled when that setting switches. (Years later, I realized that we "consumerized" almost every aspect of our lives.)

This wasn't always so. Long ago, we figured out how to live in community, on the Commons. It was hard-won wisdom, and we've forgotten most of it.

Actually, we didn't just forget it. We steamrolled it over a couple centuries with the mutually reinforcing dynamics of several isms: colonialism, industrialism, capitalism, consumerism, and modernism. Now we're rugged individuals in the ownership society — treated as consumers, not citizens — and we wonder why so many of us feel apathetic, disconnected, sad, and powerless.

Discovering the thread that connects my contrarians brought me to believe not only that we have an opportunity to redesign everything from trust, but that trust is the (only) way forward.

Reality Check

Whoa, whoa, whoa!, I hear your brain say: has Jerry read the news? It seems trust is in tatters these days. Aren't there a lot of bad actors out there? Don't people around the world seem hungrier for change than for trust? Isn't Generative AI making this all more difficult? And how do you scale trust? Isn't Design from Trust the most naïve program anyone's ever put forth?

I can't blame you for being skeptical. It's certainly time for a reality check in this post, and it's easy to see how DfT might seem an idealist's dream. Allow me to build a case for it.

First, Design from Trust is not naïve trust. The world definitely has bad actors, some of whom are scary smart and well organized. But we shouldn't let them dictate how we design our world, which is somehow where we've ended up.

When you do meet the bad actors, two points: 1) It's important to know how to defend yourself, which then lets you choose to be undefended (a gesture of trust), not defenseless; and 2) What some of the bad actors want is to be heard, or to belong. Design from Trust gives them that, which may help turn them into good actors.

Second, you may also be thinking: Trust doesn't scale! What's true here is that using industrial methods to create trust doesn't scale. We are humans, not robots (yet). Partly, we've lost our perspective on large-scale social trust because we've been designing most everything for efficiency, scale and profit, deprecating meaning, connection, and interdependence. Trust does scale, but it does so organically and adaptively, by giving people design options they opt into and make their own, not by imposing "best practices" (or worse, misguided edicts) from on high.

People are screaming for change around the world because the current systems aren't giving them a future worth fighting for. The social contract is broken everywhere, and we are involuntarily renegotiating it.

Unfortunately, we have little sense of how to make our situations better, because we have completely alienated ourselves from the principles that would help us do so. Our default assumption has become mistrust, which is very corrosive. So instead, we turn the old dials to 11, adding intensity, surveillance, and laws that make little sense, and then wonder why people are still upset and the statistics don't improve.

Third, the alternatives to sorting out trust all suck. From assuming that technologists will fix our problems, to donning goggles and living in the Metaverse, or colonizing Mars because we've spoiled our planet, I don't see a plausible, popular vision out there that leads to a society worth loving. Trust offers credible, desirable ways forward.

And fourth, in today's geopolitical arena, trust is being undermined relentlessly. From journalism and science to elections and foreigners, mistrust is rampant. It's a rhetorical war, and trust is losing.

These are all serious challenges that any trust-based approach must acknowledge. Shifting to the positive, consider the benefits of leveraging authentic trust.

Benefits

Trust:

Is cheaper than control: Surveillance, security and enforcement are expensive. What's worse, people in coercive systems spend a lot of energy avoiding and circumventing the control systems. Imagine instead most everyone willingly working toward the systems' goals while trying to improve the system.
Connects people, builds community: Design from Trust usually relies on humans collaborating, and usually in a way that feels good and creates shared assets, such as vacant rooms now available for rent, a World Wide Web that allows for innovation, and curious kids who aspire to be good citizens.
Unlocks genius: Control typically means making sure everyone "swims in their own lane." Having sharp boundaries lets you see who is failing and whom to reward. But it also keeps people from offering the skills that aren't on their job description. And that's where genius lies. Making it available is a huge payoff.
Begets abundance: Control systems typically create scarcity. If a school requires a particular PhD to teach, then doesn't pay well, you may be short of high-quality teachers. Releasing that constraint suddenly creates an abundance of teachers. The question then is finding your way to the right one.
Differentiates organizations (especially in low-trust times): A low point in global trust may seem a poor time to pitch trust, but it will make organizations that get it right stand out as if they're painted in neon colors.
Feels great, even when it's scary: After you learned how Wikipedia works, then got over the "this is nuts!" reaction, how did you feel? Were you pleased to be part of it? Did you want more things in your life that work that way?

Trust is also fragile. And more.

Covering all these benefits in depth would turn this post into a white paper or a book, so as you might imagine, I'll be posting about them, plus the many other issues I'm just brushing in here. Follow or subscribe if you'd like to follow the journey, or join this private LinkedIn group if you'd like to join in the process. Contact me directly if you'd like to explore these issues for your organization.

How (or: What I've Learned So Far)

I need to be honest: Design from (not for) Trust isn't yet a step-by-step methodology you can pull off the shelf. What I'm offering here is pattern recognition: the ability to see the common architecture in successful trust-based systems so you can recognize opportunities to build or redesign with these principles.

That said, some patterns are emerging about what it takes to shift to DfT:

You need a catalyst moment. Wikipedia's shift from Nupedia to wiki wasn't incremental. It was a fundamental reconception. The same is true for most DfT transformations. You can't just "add trust" to an existing mistrustful system. You typically need to question the core assumptions and rebuild from there.

You need to spot the control mechanisms. Most of us are blind to how our systems signal mistrust because we've normalized them. Some questions that help reveal these mechanisms:

Where do we assume people will shirk or cheat?
What requires permission that could work with transparency instead?
Where do we police boundaries that might dissolve?
What risks are we eliminating that might actually engage people?

You need to flip the default. In traditional healthcare, the default assumption is that patients won't comply. In the Boston University redesign, the default became that patients want to get healthy but need help navigating complexity. That single flip — changing what you assume unless proven otherwise — unlocks entirely different solutions.

You need principles, not rules. The Principles of Design from Trust start with "Assume Good Faith" and build from there. These aren't a checklist; they're a lens that helps you see new possibilities.

You need examples to train your eye. The more DfT examples you encounter — from traffic calming to unconferences to workplace democracy — the better you get at spotting the pattern and imagining applications in your own domain. That's why I'm collecting these stories here and here. I'd love to hear your stories of Design from Trust.

What I can't yet give you is "The 7 Steps to Design from Trust" or "The DfT Playbook." This is partly because the approach is young. It's also because in Design from Trust, just seeing the contradictions isn't enough. You have to shift your thinking, because from today's default frame of mind, many of the solutions DfT proposes seem counterintuitive or just a bit crazy, as I described earlier. A real shift in your perspective allows you then to shape the new dynamics you want to create, then set it all in motion.

What I can offer is consultation to help you see where trust-based design might transform your systems, and a growing community exploring these questions together, as I mentioned in the previous section.

What Becomes Possible

Design from Trust addresses challenges that resist conventional solutions, precisely because conventional solutions rely on more control, surveillance, or coercion, which often makes things worse.

Here's what changes when you design from trust:

Organizations build authentic relationships with clients, customers, employees, and suppliers, not through marketing campaigns about trust, but by actually designing systems that demonstrate it. When Airbnb lets strangers sleep in one another's homes, or when Toyota lets any worker stop the line, they're not advertising trust, they're architecting it.

Young people find paths to meaningful adulthood when we shift from systems that infantilize them (tracking their every move, denying them real responsibility) to ones that offer graduated agency. Unschooling demonstrates this: when you trust kids to direct their own learning, many become more engaged, curious, and capable than their conventionally schooled peers.

Institutions regain legitimacy not through better PR but through actual redesign. People don't trust institutions because the institutions keep breaking trust through their design. Fix the design — make it transparent, participatory, accountable — and trust follows. You can't market your way out of a trust problem caused by design from mistrust.

Communities heal divides not through dialogue alone but through shared work on trust-based systems. When people collaborate on a Wikipedia article, participate in an unconference, or navigate a traffic-calmed intersection together, they're practicing trust across whatever lines usually separate them. It's not that DfT solves polarization directly — it creates contexts where collaboration becomes possible despite differences.

Innovation accelerates when you unlock the genius currently trapped behind role boundaries and permission structures. Open source software didn't just make code free; it released the latent talent of thousands who had ideas but lacked institutional permission to contribute. What else becomes possible when we stop asking permission and start offering platforms?

Systems become antifragile because distributed trust is more resilient than centralized control. Wikipedia survives vandalism better than Encyclopedia Britannica survived market changes. Systems designed from trust adapt because they have thousands of people invested in their success, not just a few paid gatekeepers.

I'm not claiming Design from Trust solves everything. But I am claiming it unlocks solutions to problems that resist conventional approaches. The question isn't whether these outcomes are possible: We can already see them working in the examples I've shared. The question is whether we can learn to see the pattern clearly enough to apply it more broadly.

Design from Trust isn't a silver bullet. It can't force trust in places where bad faith is dominant. It can't replace the need for accountability. It won't work in contexts where immediate safety requires top-down control (emergency rooms, air traffic control). What it CAN do is redesign systems that have defaulted to mistrust unnecessarily, creating the conditions where trust becomes possible.

Lovely, useful ideas spill out when you flip your assumptions about trust, such as Scarcity = Abundance - Trust, The Joy Line, and, well, Design from Trust itself 😁.

If we do this right, we might collectively construct a Betterverse.

#trust #designfromtrust #strategy

Where to now?

DfT isn't yet a book, a methodology, or a workshop, but it wants to be all of these.

I cross-post actively from my corner of the OGM Wiki to my Substack, LinkedIn and Medium accounts. Don't follow me on them all, you'll go crazy. Pick the one you visit the most.

This particular post is foundational to the Design from Trust idea, building on several recent posts of mine. Because it's foundational, I'll be updating it often. I'll also keep updating DesignfromTrust.com. If you'd like to be in conversation on this topic, please join this private LinkedIn group (follow the link to request access).

This article is cross-posted on Substack here, Medium here and LinkedIn here. It's also here in my Brain.

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