Trust vs. Speed vs. Cost

I recently heard a statement which I thought is so true:

Trust High = Speed Fast & Cost Low

Trust Low = Speed Slow & Cost High

Example of this is a going through security at the airport. Trust is low, hence cost of security and speed to get to the gate is slow.

The same principles can be applied to business. In organizations where trust of employees are low the speed of decision making is slow and cost of making such decisions are costly.

In traditional organizations, as well as prevalent in emerging markets, there are typically a large number of approvals required for any purchase which slows things down and adds cost to the decision making process.

In "new age" companies such as Google or Facebook, management puts a lot of trust in to the employees and instead have a process to monitor this freedom resulting in fast decision making and issue resolutions.

An example of this is Facebook where any employee or contractor can swipe their badge and get the essentials needed for their work such as keyboard, mouse, flash cards, batteries etc.