
Your Company Culture Sucks: Transparency is Mostly Cloudy
Sometimes, in the pursuit of what we would consider to be a great company culture, we spend so much time focusing on large gestures on which we think positive company cultures are built, we miss the “little things” we do everyday that are actually culture killers. In this series, we’ll look at these small changes you can personally make to start improving your company’s culture immediately.
“A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.” — Dalai Lama
When the Dalai Lama speaks, you would think people would listen; but when it comes to transparency in the workplace, that is far from the norm. And without transparency, our normal default is to think the worst.
I can almost guarantee that everyone of us has been in a situation like this:
You get an email from a client looking for, what seems like a simple answer, about when their ‘special order’ shipment will be arriving. They have been waiting more than a week, have already received an invoice, and simply want to know when they can expect a delivery date.
Seems like something to which you should be able to get an easy answer. So you shoot off a message to your purchasing department to request some info.
Upon receiving the message, it is read, and the recipient moves on with their day (after half an eyeroll).
You wait and wait for a response before finally looping in your manager by forwarding them the client’s request along with the fact that you have been waiting for six hours with no response. Your manager makes a call to the office, and asks to speak to the same person you sent the email to earlier, but only reaches their voicemail. They follow up with an email as well.
Purchasing receives the third email in a short period of time, and becomes increasingly frustrated with the entire situation.
All of this time, your customer is growing increasingly frustrated because all they want to know is what is going on; and as far as they’re concerned, you haven’t even taken the time to get them a simple answer about when they can expect delivery. They’re wondering what kind of person they are dealing with who cannot even handle a simple task. The customer decides to try their customer service rep for a quicker answer.
After some friendly banter about the stressfulness of the situation, the customer service representative promises the client they will get back to them with an answer to their query shortly, just as soon as they check in with purchasing.
The purchasing agent, now at their breaking point, responds to the customer service rep with a string of obscenities that would make a sailor blush. Just as the the customer service rep tries to disappear from the room without anyone noticing, the string of obscenities ends and is punctuated by, “the products came in from the vendor today, and we’ll be delivering them to the customer tomorrow.”
An email is quickly composed, letting the customer know the good news, and the sales rep is copied just to keep them informed. The customer replies to all with both a thank you and the words “I’m glad someone over there could finally help me out.”
So what did this one little question from a client do to your company culture?
Wait- let’s take a step back. What did the fact that the purchasing team kept all of the information they had available on a “need-to-know” basis do to the company culture?
It absolutely destroyed it. It created division, and an extreme level of tension within the company. A sales rep was left answerless in front of a client (a client who now thinks much less of that person’s ability to help them in any situation). It left people questioning the ability of their other teammates across departments. It created a level of anger that has no place in the workplace under any circumstance.
But how did all of this happen, and more importantly, how could this (all-too-familiar scenario) be prevented so it doesn’t destroy the company culture completely?
Transparency.
Think about how different this situation could have been if purchasing had sent an email a week ago simply stating that the special-order item was expected in stock on such and such a date. If armed with that information, there is a good chance the first message would have never even been sent. There’s a better-than-average chance the sales representative could have been confident in giving an answer in the beginning, and maybe even provide the information proactively.
While transparency is part of a better overall approach to internal communication, it is an important part all onto itself. While it is sometimes our first instinct keep the information we have close, as a sort of job security, this practice is detrimental to creating a great company culture.
Information sharing in all forms builds trust, and when a company has a culture built on trust, it is as solid a foundation as you can have as an organization. When people truly trust their teammates, it changes the default mindset from negative to positive when something goes wrong.
So step outside your comfort zone, and start sharing more information that you normally wouldn’t; I promise the results will have a surprisingly positive effect on your company culture.
