I’ve been thinking about and exploring transparency a lot lately. As I’m building dashboards for employees, transparency is one of the key factors of integration within the workforce. But there are some funny things about transparency and this is why most companies and organisations are having difficulty adopting a transparant way of working.

• Ownership is spread when sharing processes, this lessens your level of power, but this world is not just about ownership any more, access is what it is all about.
• Transparency limits the degrees of freedom, when accountability is shown, you are less likely to choose a more adventurous path. Culture is key here, because if you do create a culture were failing is accepted, adding transparency to the mix might prevent people to make the same mistakes.
• Sharing seems to limit choices due to shortening the feedback loop. But thinking about it, done the correct way I think it could increase choices.
• The risks of transparency are not yet enough explored. It’s a grey area in which the rules aren’t yet enough established. The internet itself can be seen as an early precursor of what radical full transparency could be within a organisation. It can be used in both good and bad ways.

In my case, most of the situations involve data and technology in relation with transparency, ethics and privacy. It’s a very big grey area in which there’s enough discovery to be done!

Note: I’ve changed this blog a little to hopefully get me more into a writing mode… Expect more posts like these…