On Topic: No, really, you can trust me

I have been accused over the years by various people, from elementary school teachers and optometrists to traffic cops, of having, let's say, an untethered imagination. As recently as last week, if memory serves.

So I could be way off base on this, but I've wanted to imagine riding about in these autonomous cars we keep hearing about will be a lot like being passengers in an amusement-park ride - long periods of tedium interrupted without warning by stomach-wrenching flashes of twists, turns and hair-raising dips.

I'm entranced each time friends from California post online photos of those driverless Google cars. (The images usually are blurry and taken from some great distance, as if they were sightings of Big Foot.)

But have no doubt, driverless cars - whatever they'll be like - are coming to a driveway near us.

For one thing, the insurance industry is hot for them. As one executive predicted in a recent BBC World Service story, taking the driving out of our hands and placing that trust in the chips of a computer will reduce car accidents and related injuries up to 18 percent.

Also, self-driving technology will be introduced into the marketplace - that means to you, me and our neighborhood auto dealerships' lots - in a trickle-down sort of way. They'll start with adding the tech to the big-ticket luxury cars, then over time offer it for lower-priced vehicles. Just as were power windows and fancy satellite receivers that now accompany radios.

That's how driverless car advocates think they'll overcome the biggest hurdle: trust.

Will you trust your car to be better - by which I mostly mean safer - than you are to get you from point A to point B?

So-called driverless cars are not intended to be completely driverless, at least as I understand the concept. You still won't be able to take a nap or read a novel because your car will urge you to take back the wheel when some especially hazardous navigations lurk on the horizon.

But still. We seem to have a hard enough time trusting other humanoids let alone a computer powering a 3,000-pound hunk of metal and flammable fuel.

In this column for Aug. 16, I mentioned 'Centered Leadership,” a book by McKinsey Quarterly writers Joanna Barsh and Johanne Lavoie. In it, they write about, among other management issues, the importance of forging trust with the folk you supervise.

They urge reliability - don't make promises you can't or don't intend to keep - and what they term as 'congruence” - make certain what you say and do actually matches what you believe is the right thing, not simply happy words to get that person the heck out of your office.

But most important, I think, is they advocate openness. Be clear about what you will and won't do, and about what you really don't think is a good idea.

When the occasion has required it, I've found myself saying, 'I will see what I can do, and I will let you know what happens.”

It may seem naive in today's too-cynical world to actually say such things out loud. Like thinking driverless cars are going to be as much fun as a trip to Disney World.

But if you then can follow through, it'll go a long way the next time you say to an employee, 'Trust me.”

And speaking of trust:

I received pushback from some readers for the column I wrote for May 24, 'Why millennials matter.” In it, I'd contended millennials were getting a bad rap, that they weren't the superficial, culture-obsessed layabouts we continually are told they are - at least, not all of them.

I'd also tried to make the case that many of the charges laid against them - that they flit from job to job, they won't partake in our economy by buying homes and starting families - weren't taking into account the baggage with which that age group has been saddled.

So I was glad to see the Economist magazine has opted to side with me. But it also argued, in an Aug. 1 column, that a few of the other generally held beliefs are equally invalid.

For example, many books and articles have told us millennials are born collaborators. But the Economist cited consulting company CEB's survey of 90,000 American workers in which 59 percent of millennials claimed competition was their prime motivator at work. That's contrasted with 50 percent of baby boomers who felt the same red-meat, them-versus-me drive.

(The Economist's parent company, Pearson, which has offices in Iowa City, announced earlier this month it would sell off its 50 percent stake in the publication.)

Here's another example: CEB found 37 percent of millennials actually distrust input from their co-workers. That lack of reliance for all other generations was significantly lower, at 26 percent.

This would suggest millennials are not the team players we keep being told they are. That's something supervisors need to bear in mind as we help and encourage them in their careers - and for the betterment of our company's own productivity.

Trust me.

' Michael Chevy Castranova is enterprise and Sunday business editor of The Gazette. (319) 398-5873; michaelchevy.castranova@thegazette.com