There's more to transparency than telling the truth

There's more to transparency than simply telling the truth.

Let me give you an example. A standard packet of Walkers Quavers you may buy in your local corner shop delivers 109 calories.

However, flip over to the the rear of the same pack and you find some interesting claims about a range of Walkers snacks which all come in at under 99 calories a pack. You'll note Quavers are included in their number.
How can this possibly be?

The answer is far from transparent.

A packet of Quavers from a multipack is just 88 calories actually. Wow. Do they use a different recipe? No, they just make the packs smaller (16.4g in the multipack vs 20.5 in the ordinary one).

Given time and the internet you can find this stuff out. Walkers are making the truth available - but that's not the kind of transparency demanded of Open Business; ie the kind that builds trust between consumer and brand.

There is a sense of dishonesty rather than truth in how this is presented to us. It feels like we are being deliberately given parts of the story when that part is to the benefit of one party (the brand) rather than the mutual benefit of both.

And as we make clear in chapter 10  of The 10 Principles of Open Business (Trust), building trust requires the customers belief that the brand has their best interest at heart.

The Quavers example feels like the brand tells the part of the truth it feels will be of most benefit to it at any one point. A transparent retelling may have the mutlipacks stating: "Smaller snack size - scaled down calories too"!

Transparency (Principle 8 of the 10) requires honesty. Without it we can be reduced to telling only the truth that benefits us.

The role of Open Business in emerging holacracies

How Holacracy works - image from http://holacracy.org/how-it-works

With Ev Williams’ Medium and now Zappos going the Holacracy route, it’s no surprise this ‘new’ management model is getting attention from the likes of mashable

Its Flattened/No job titles/Goal-rather-than-management-led approach is an enviable fit with the more open business philosophy companies of this kind are comfortable and familiar with.

In many ways it’s simply putting a name to and combining many of the learnings those pursuing the 10 Principles of Open Business have already acquired. - but it may also provide a useful additional toolkit for the internal development of some Open Businesses.

The following brief extracts from my new book (out on January 28) The 10 Principles of Open Business, illustrate the point:

South African entrepreneur Arthur Attwell – found similar effectiveness from following the principle of Transparency:

“... you get a productivity boost from people who properly understand their importance to the company and the role they play. So many people – even unconsciously – think that they are just a tiny cog in a big machine.”

 “They feel an alienation from the products of their work,” says Arthur.

Without transparency it’s difficult for people to find meaning in their work. And without meaning there is little ambition and even less joy.

The job descriptions he offers people are just three lines long. There is no task-by-task list of things to do every day.

Everyone must have the ambition to own their space in his company.

“That’s why we don’t have job descriptions in the conventional sense. We have a maximum three bullet-points of functional responsibility. Some people have just one or two,” says Arthur.

“What that means is the things in those bullet points are your problem. It means people have to engage with more than just a narrow task list defined by key performance indicators,” adds Arthur.

“Make your people the boss of what they do.”

This will sound familiar to those trialling holocracy.

As will the impact of Principle 4: Shareability:

Definition: Packaging knowledge for easy and open sharing both internally and externally

Sharing is the cultural key to collaboration. It is where the organisational design principles of collaboration reside.

It is a principle which has the powerful benefit of flattening hierarchies, distributing responsibility and making the organisation more strategy and goal-led than management and task directed.

Shareability provides the tools for a radical re-organisation of resource. Deployed effectively it means people gravitate to what they care most about and can do most about. It can allocate people to work with their passions – generating a giant leap in effectiveness and productivity – not to mention morale.

And from the chapter on Principle 1: Purpose...

“If every employee is clear about the Purpose of the org, if they express this in what they do and it is expressed in what they see of the behaviours of the business and of their colleagues, then they will be better able to make decisions which are truly aligned to the Purpose...

The decisions your people make are what drives the success of your business. Ensuring those decisions are made towards your shared goal (Purpose) is... more critical than ever.

Since we have seen that telling teams is not enough (and even less likely to succeed in distributed structures), ensuring they know the Purpose, through belief and behaviours, becomes even more essential.

World 1.0 vs World 2.0: Thinking out loud!

This from David Gurteen:
"This thinking can be applied in business, in education and learning, to adults and to children and to government and to society. Its not just about technology!"

Amen David. It's certainly about more than simply who gets to create and distribute content.

World 1.0	World 2.0
Knowledge sharing and learning is imposed additional work	Knowledge sharing and social learning is a welcome natural part of people's everyday work
Work takes places behind closed doors	Work takes place transparently where everyone can see it
IT Tools are imposed on people	People select the tools that work best for them
People are controlled out of fear they will do wrong	People are given freedom in return for accepting responsibility
Information is centralized, protected and controlled	Information is distributed freely and uncontrolled
Publishing is centrally controlled	Anyone can publish what they want
Context is stripped from information	Context is retained in the form of stories
People think quietly alone	People think out loud together
People tend to write in the third person, in a professional voice	People write in the first person in their own voice
People especially those in authority are closed to new ideas and new ways of working	Everyone is open to new ideas
Information is pushed to people whether they have asked for it or not	People decide the information they need and subscribe to it
The world is seen through a Newtonian cause and effect model	The world is recognized to be complex and that different approaches are needed