Obesity. When evaluating trust, one often-overlooked factor is the effect of technology on centralized monitoring and what we call "long-arm interference." Most large companies have wanted to seize the opportunities of globalization, yet their quest for synergies across brands, geographies, and sales channels has led to over-layered and complex organizations, creating a distance between field knowledge and centralized decision centers. By partitioning markets, customers, and products to extremes, responsibilities tend to be diluted to the point where no one is clear on who is doing what and why. Instead of being simple and lean, large groups turn into rotund conglomerates, too heavy to move on.

A good example comes from a leading global player in the home and personal care sector, with many products, brands, and sales channels. The company started small, fostering a culture of entrepreneurship and informal processes, yet its tremendous international growth eventually resulted in a "too big to handle"” conglomerate. Ambiguity created inefficiencies and frustration, with multiple sales teams selling to the same clients. Entrepreneurial and innovative thinking was impossible.

Paranoia. The fear of losing control over a complex grouping of entities—business units, divisions, subsidiaries, holdings—is also often developed by obese companies and results in a vicious cycle of mistrust and more control levels (see figure 3). Large organizations are particularly susceptible to paranoia, which ultimately constrains rather than guides their actions. Ask any head of a poor-performing business unit and you will hear about the vicious cycle of failure that ensues. "It began with missed numbers [performance metrics]," explains one business unit head. "This led to headquarters tightening the screws on us, making decisions for us, and ultimately robbing me of ownership and accountability for decisions." The resulting declining performance encouraged headquarters to tighten control even more until recovery was no longer an option and the business unit failed.