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RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

best shape our project teams of the future. And what’s someone’s hologram in a meeting isn’t going to make
not to love about that? them more trustworthy. That part is up to us.

That thing called trust Recognizing that it’s a choice

In the past, successful client relationships were largely The future of client relationships is much like the future
built on trust. Perhaps two people met for the first time of all relationships. It’s our own personal responsibility
at a business function, decided there was enough to stop and think about the best ways to solve the prob-
‘common ground’ to build enough trust to work together lem at hand and choose the right balance of human
in future and then spent more time strengthening this and digital solutions. This is a balancing act and will be
relationship, which led to more work. All of which took different for each business interaction.
place face-to-face, in physical environments, with a few
phone calls in between to make sure the momentum of Yes, let’s use our VR capabilities so that our clients can
the relationship was never lost. ‘walk through’ their new office building even before the
first brick has been laid, but let’s not get lazy about hu-
Today, we’ve turned that formula on its head. Transac- man interaction. Ditching our VR headsets for a couple
tion often precedes relationship. But as we spend more hours for a few drinks at that same building is just as
and more time using increasingly better virtual technolo- important.
gy, we must ensure we build and maintain a certain
level of trust with our clients and within our project We can have the best of both worlds, but we still need
teams – that is key. to work at it.

Technology as progress or pain point really is within our Technology today often minimizes the need for physical
control. We can have the best of both worlds, but we meetings and human interaction – sometimes eliminat-
need to know how and when to use the right tools. Trust ing it completely. People are often geographically re-
takes longer to gain than it does to lose, and is difficult mote, but still work on a project together. Our desire is
to recover. for that same project to be successful – but let’s not
forget that underlying the endeavor is a high-
The human touch performance project team of people who trust each oth-
er and work synergistically.
Within minutes of meeting someone for the very first
time you’re usually able to find some common ground. A head-long rush into offshoring and work-sharing can,
This common ground is a safe place to build a human just like in the world of online dating, end in broken
relationship and is also somewhere you can easily re- hearts and mismatched expectations. Our challenge is
visit when you need to re-engage in that relationship. realizing the benefits of technology in a time-poor work
The word relate comes from the Latin relatus meaning environment balanced with building trust. In future, we’ll
to carry back, which is exactly what we do in our rela- have to work doubly hard on finding common values
tionships. When we meet someone for the first time, we and building connections in our project teams in order
walk away from this human interaction and take away to take our project relationships from a ‘one-time date’
part of them (their personal stories and information) with to a ‘happily ever after’.◊
us, which we remember to bring back out the next time
we see, speak or write to them. It shows the other per- By Craig Adcock, Aurecon
son that we understand and have empathy for them,
and is the foundation of building a trusting relationship. Aurecon’s futuristic blog “Just Imagine” provides a
In effect, trust creates a human efficiency that speeds glimpse into the future for curious readers, exploring
up the way we interact with people on subsequent oc- ideas that are probable, possible and for the imagina-
casions because we know each other well enough to tion.
proceed without caution.
Doing away with the fax is one thing, but doing away
with niceties is quite another. Trust takes time and ef-
fort, regardless of the speed of your internet. With virtu-
al reality (VR) about to overtake virtual meetings and
video conferencing, let’s remember that seeing
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