I have begun to start looking at “Radical Transparency” almost as a silver bullet for many problems: corruption, fear of authority, economic imbalance. The book WORK RULES by Laszlo Bock touched this subject as it is one of Google’s THREE values. Some excerpts follow.
IF YOU BELIEVE PEOPLE ARE GOOD, YOU MUST BE UNAFRAID TO SHARE INFORMATION WITH THEM
Transparency is a corner stone of Google culture. “Default to Open” is a phrase sometimes heard in the Open Source technology community. Assume that all information can be shared with the team, instead of assuming that no information can be shared. Restricting information should be a conscious effort, and you’d better have a good reason for doing so.
Consider Google’s code base that makes all their products work. At Google, a newly hired software engineer gets access to almost all code on the first day. Google’s Intranet includes product roadmaps, launch plans, and employee snippets (weekly status reports) alongside employee and team quarterly goals (called OKRs, for “Objectives and Key Results”). Everyone can see what everyone is working on. A few weeks into the Q, Chairman walks the company though the same presentation that the board of directors saw just days before. Googlers are trusted to keep the information confidential.
At the weekly TGIF meetings with Larry and Sergey, any question is fair game, and every question deserves an answer. Even the way the questions are chosen is rooted in transparency. Users can not only submit questions, but also discuss and vote on them. This crowdsourcing prioritises questions that reflect the interests of an audience.
One of the serendipitous benefits of transparency is that simply by sharing data, performance improves.
There are examples outside Google that has pushed internal transparency further. Bridgewater Associates (world’s largest hedge fund with $145 billion in assets) records every meeting and makes available to all employees. Recordings are used not just as communication vehicles, but as learning tools. They can illustrate how decisions are made, and how even the most senior people are learning and growing. The recordings are also used to encourage more precise thinking and communication. No more “I never said that” or “That’s not what I meant”, when it’s possible to review what actually happened. A more subtle objective is to reduce politicking. It’s hard to go behind someone’s back when they can later listen to your meetings.
There are degrees of transparency, of defaulting to open. Most organizations are so FAR from risk in this area that they have little to lose, and much to gain.
Fundamentally, if you’re an organization that says “Our people are our greatest asset” (as most do), and you mean it, you must default to open.
Otherwise, you are lying to your people and to yourself. You’re saying people matter but treating them like they don’t. Openness demonstrates to your employees that you believe they are trustworthy and have good judgement. And giving them more context about what is happening (and how and why) will enable them to do their jobs more effectively and contribute in ways a top-down manager couldn’t anticipate.
altLearners 