Trust. It’s not a bonus or a nice-to-have—it’s the invisible glue that holds everything together. Whether it’s your team, your users, or your stakeholders, without trust, you’re toast. With it? You’re unstoppable.
But let’s get real. Trust doesn’t just magically appear. It’s not like your users will wake up one day and declare, “You know what? I trust this product now.” Trust is earned. Brick by brick. Conversation by conversation. Misstep by misstep. And, in my years of managing enterprise products—first building breach management tools from scratch, now modernizing legacy systems—I’ve learned a thing or two about how it’s done.
Trust Begins with Listening 👂
When I was working on a 0-to-1 breach management tool, the goal was simple: help enterprise teams handle security incidents more efficiently. But reality? Absolute chaos. Every month, new privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA were changing the rules, and we were scrambling to keep up.
We built what we thought was the perfect product: fancy dashboards, automated workflows, all the shiny stuff. But when we showed it to the users? Brutal feedback. One security lead looked me dead in the eye and said, “This is nice, but I don’t trust it to handle incidents. I still have to do everything manually.”
Ouch. That’s when it hit me—we were building what we thought was cool, not what they actually needed. We tossed out half the roadmap, sat down with our users, and focused on the alerts that really mattered. Listening saved that product—and probably my sanity.
Transparency: The Trust Builder You Can’t Ignore
Fast forward to my current job, modernizing a legacy enterprise system that’s older than some of the people using it. Picture this: clunky interfaces, convoluted workflows, and users who resist change like it’s a personal attack. “Why fix it if it’s worked this way for decades?” they ask.
Modernizing something people have relied on forever? It’s like renovating a house while people are still living in it. Transparency isn’t just helpful—it’s essential.
We added a simple feature showing how data was being processed in real-time. Did anyone ask for it? Nope. But we knew users didn’t trust the system to begin with, and more mystery wasn’t going to help. The feedback was almost comical: “Wow, I can finally see what’s happening behind the scenes.” It wasn’t flashy, but it worked.
So, How Do You Build Trust? ✨
You don’t build trust with grand gestures or shiny features. You build it with time, effort, and a lot of awkward conversations. You listen when feedback is hard to hear. You’re transparent, even when it’s uncomfortable. And you adapt, even when you think your original idea was genius.
Trust isn’t just about being consistent or reliable—it’s about making people feel like they’re part of the journey. Whether it’s a privacy tool or a modernized legacy system, people want to know their input matters. They want to feel heard. They want to know they’re more than just a ticket in your backlog.
And If All Else Fails...
Trust in enterprise products is like a long-term relationship. There will be arguments (think: angry client calls), and there will be mistakes (like the time I shipped a feature with a broken “Save” button). But if you keep showing up, keep listening, and keep proving you care, it works out 🤝❤️💪