Trust

As a Specialist-Generalist you often have to take a punt on people – how do you decide who you should trust?

Twice US Secretary of War; Henry Stimson (1867 – 1950) gives good advice: start with everybody.

Stimson had his hands full during WWII. As Wikipedia notes:

Stimson took charge of raising and training 13 million soldiers and airmen, supervised the spending of a third of the nation’s GDP on the Army and the Air Forces, helped formulate military strategy, and oversaw the Manhattan Project, which built the first atomic bombs.

He was also a lawyer, mountaineer and Governor of the Philippines and coined the Stimson Doctrine: the policy of nonrecognition of states created as a result of aggression.

Stimson’s advice on trust?

“The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.”