Nordic Wellbeing Academy is pleased to share a new paper co-developed by NWA Founder and International Director Lars Münter and CIES Director of Innovation and Research, Adam Skali: The Trust Equation – How to Build, Measure, and Scale Collaboration That Lasts.

The paper grew out of an iterative dialogue between the two authors, and it tackles a question that comes up constantly in health, education, and sustainability work: everyone agrees partnerships need trust, but few teams have a working method for building it, measuring it, or protecting it once results are on the line.

Why trust deserves operational attention

The authors open with a point worth repeating: trust functions as infrastructure, not sentiment. When it is thin, digital tools stall, partnerships stay shallow, and promising ideas never scale past a pilot. When it is present, people take the interpersonal risks that innovation actually requires – sharing half-formed ideas, flagging disagreement early, committing resources before every outcome is guaranteed.

Rather than leaving trust as an assumed byproduct of good intentions, the paper proposes treating it as a strategic capacity with its own phases, feedback loops, and readiness indicators – something a Theory of Change model can map just as it would map any other outcome.

Old philosophy, current practice

One of the paper’s more distinctive moves is its return to Aristotle. Ethos, pathos, and logos – credibility, emotional resonance, and clear reasoning – are presented as design criteria rather than rhetorical history. The authors pair each with contemporary case studies: the Danish Diabetes Association’s Community Council model for ethos, NHS co-production labs in mental health services for pathos, and participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre for logos. Together the cases suggest that trust-rich institutions are built through repeated, visible practice rather than a single well-crafted mission statement.

Tools for the work itself

Beyond the conceptual framing, the paper offers practical guidance for anyone facilitating multi-stakeholder work:

• Relational mapping tools such as Joint Action, for tracking who is actually talking to whom
• Equity and balance as two distinct diagnostics – who is in the room, and whether everyone in it is genuinely heard
• Readiness assessments for gauging where a partnership stands before launching into large joint meetings
• A caution against rigid KPIs and premature evaluation, since – as the authors puts it in the report – trust moves at its own pace, and treating early uncertainty as failure can derail a partnership before it stabilizes

The paper also addresses trust repair directly, arguing that breakdowns are inevitable in long-term collaboration and that recovery deserves the same intentional design as trust-building itself.

A note on context

The two authors are careful not to universalize a single model. What works in a high-trust setting like Denmark, where informal agreement can substitute for formal process, may need a different starting point elsewhere – in some contexts, confidence in a known individual carries more weight than confidence in the institution behind them. The paper treats this variation as a design input, not an exception to work around.

Read the full paper

The Trust Equation report includes a full reference list drawing on the OECD Guidelines on Measuring Trust, recent WHO Europe publications, and academic literature on organizational trust and systems change. It is a useful companion for policymakers, funders, and facilitators shaping multi-stakeholder initiatives – and a natural extension of ongoing work on trust in transformation.