BE LOYAL TO THE COMPANY NOT TO INDIVIDUAL P

BE LOYAL TO THE COMPANY NOT TO INDIVIDUALS

I much prefer trust to loyalty when it comes to organizational health.
I have just experienced and watched clients experience the toppling of relationships when they are based on individual loyalty rather than on organizational loyalty. 

These are screechingly tough times of duress and rock and a hard place pressure.  There seems to be not-- "enough"--time, resources, market share,
labor, ideas--you name it. 

There is a lot of unexpressed fear and distrust.
So people hope to find safety and survival by joining forces which we call loyalty  which is certainly a soft term for a harsh reality.  Organizations develop fissures among teams and levels and departments.  People choose which party they belong to--Leader A or Leader B.  It's a bet on who will win.  It's almost like a silent civil war. 

The more the external pressure, the more the divisions stand in bold relief.  Down sizing, restructure falls along these fault lines.  Huge chunks of talent are lost to mistaken loyalty.  If only this loyalty could be to the company not to individuals.

It is one of the supreme tests of CEO character and skill to make loyalty to the organization strengthen in times of duress.  And it is a supreme CEO failure if loyalties (not loyalty) magnify division and bring the level of possible transcendence of differences down to the lowest common behavior of "me first".  I have seen long term working relationships and teams tattered when the CEO him or herself demands loyalty to themselves rather than the organization.
  
I hate it.  I hate the souring of people toward the company as loyalties shift.
I hate the lost of collaborative achievement in tough times.  I hate the common
crassness of selfish loyalty.  Loyalty should bring out the best in people not the worst.

So I opt for trust.  Reliability, strength, truth, ability. 
Loyalty scares me in today's organizations.