Low trust shows up as operating cost before it shows up as drama.
The symptoms are familiar: duplicate tracking, shadow channels, tiny approvals, polished status instead of plain truth, and people waiting to see who will be blamed. The team may call it process. Often it is mistrust wearing a badge.
Do not attack the process first. Ask what risk the process is trying to control. If the answer is "we do not believe the data" or "we do not trust the owner to warn us," the fix is evidence, not another meeting.
Operator artifact: list the controls around one workflow. Mark each as useful governance, legacy habit, or trust tax. Remove or redesign one trust tax.
Field test: Find the report or approval that exists mainly because people no longer trust the handoff.
This is part 9 of 10 in Trust That Actually Compounds.
