What most people are talking about when they talk about ‘transparency’ is what I would call structural transparency. This refers to what information is shared freely and openly across the organization and with whom. But, another critical part of transparency norms comes down to what I would call content-level transparency, insight into the raw work as it’s happening.
Content-level transparency is easier to achieve and helpful for anyone to find information easily. There is less hidden information and individuals don’t need to talk to anyone to learn what’s going on as the work is happening. The content is public, accessible, readable, and searchable to anyone anytime, not when the information holder decides to make it available. I think it’s the ultimate culture change that can boost structural transparency. If anyone can find and read whatever is going on in an organization’s other corner at any time (in the raw form), it will also push other parts of the organization to increase their content-level transparency, and the organization can increase their structural transparency.
The benefits are also cumulative: people spend less time building trust with each other, politics are reduced, collaboration focuses on creative pursuits instead of knowledge-sharing, everyone stays honest, and people can observe what/how others are doing freely.
- Related Note(s):
- 3a: Team Decision Deployment Strategies;
- 7: Confident Humility;
- 12a: Making decisions based on three groups;
- 15: What should you do when your manager delegates a task to you?;
- 19a: Knowns and Unknowns;
- 32b: Communicating Organizational Changes;
- 34a: Transparency and respect build trust;
- 37: Setting Organizational Goals and Processes;
- 54: Creating Open Culture at Work;
- Source: Structural and Content-level Transparency by Kool Aid Factory;
