I often say that transparency is very important in decision making. Because it gives sense to the decision it’s key in improving membership, trust toward managers and organization, and it makes people more implicated as long as they’ve been implicated in the process. A good approach to solve part of HR problematics.
This post is mainly inspired by a former post by Elizabeth Albrycht that I bookmarked weeks ago.
There are two parts in decision’s transparency:
– toward the outside: it’s very important for customers and (above all) investors. The US context is slightly different from ours since they have to deal with a specific legislation (Sarbanes-Oxley) that force companies to be more transparent on anything that can have a financial impact (that’s to say nearly everything ;-)). Despite this we, european, must keep eyes open wide because such a legislation may be voted in our countries and, above all, that in case of a coming-together beetween Euronext and the NYSE our companies will surely have to take Sarbanes-Oxley in consideration. This is a very important point in a middle term strategy.
– toward the inside: no more to say than that I said in my introduction or what you can find in Elyzabeth’s post. I just want to mention that (few) companies are now getting involved in this (heretic?) way of doing things. Wikis and blogs are empowering transparency in some companies by making it public and sometimes collaborative. A good example I know very well (because I am involved in as an external consultant) is the deployement of blueKiwi as a beta project at Dassault Systemes Sales France, the project becoming now mainstream. Proximity, explaintions, discussions, co-construction…that what it actually brought to the company and we’re far from having discovered all the potential of this “peopleware” tool.
It will take time to make things change but I’m sure things will go this way. It’s our role to make managers understand what they can win in so doing. It’s not about communication but about management and the need you have to count upon motivated and implicated employees…and to bring a touch of collective intelligence in your company.
