Transparency is a key value in Agile organisations. It improves employees’ motivation and make the teams perform better. At the same time, transparency is difficult to achieve, because it usually requires serious changes to company’s culture and mindset. You can’t do it overnight, but fortunately, each and every step towards this goal counts.
Transparency allows for building an environment of trust and safety which is a foundation of great teamwork (you need teamwork to succeed and there is no real teamwork in the absence of trust – please refer to a great The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni). Transparency can’t be implemented top-down, it requires senior management working together with their teams on improving all company’s practises and policies.
The good news is that transparency is not binary. You can constantly work on this doing it step by step. Fortunately, full transparency is not a myth, because there are companies that are already there. A good example is Buffer that shares their thoughts, results and progress on their blog. I highly recommend reading some of their posts, because, in my opinion, it’s a great source of ideas for other teams and organisations.
Personally, I’ve never worked in an organisation like Buffer, but some of the companies I worked for were reasonably transparent. My experience confirms that transparency boosts trust and teamwork and makes everyone concentrate on contributing to organisation’s overall success rather than spending time on trying to game the system.
Recommended reading:
- The 4 Benefits of Transparency We’ve Seen at Our Startup
- Introducing the New Buffer Salary Formula, Calculate-Your-Salary App and The Whole Team’s New Salaries
- Introducing Transparent Pricing: What Your Money is Used for When you Purchase a Buffer Subscription
- The Advantages and Workflows of Fully Transparent Email
- The Transparent Pay Revolution
