Build Trust-Led Growth Loops

What if trust was infrastructure, not chemistry?

What if the real constraint on your team’s speed wasn’t resourcing, alignment, or tooling, but the way your system handles permission?

In my advisory work, I’ve seen this pattern emerge repeatedly.

• The loops are well defined.

• Cadences are running.

• Dashboards are live.

• The work is getting done.

But something slows everything down.

• Every handoff triggers a Slack thread.

• Every experiment stalls while waiting for alignment.

• Every decision travels upward before it moves outward.

It’s not a motivation problem. It’s not a tooling problem. It’s a system that does not yet trust itself to move.

That erosion isn’t always obvious. In fact, it often hides inside otherwise functional teams.

This essay offers a different lens.

Trust is not a feeling. It’s a system design choice.

It shapes how motion compounds or slows down.

You can measure, score, and improve it the same way you would a product funnel or onboarding flow.

Inside this piece, you’ll get:

• A diagnostic to help identify where trust is slowing your loops

• A …