Why I Believe In Transparency
I grew up in an environment where I was taught not to reveal all my cards; in fact, hide as many as I can. Why would I want to show all my cards when I can make use of them to my advantage? If I reveal too many cards, others would take advantage of me.
This mentality shaped my perspective of business and work relationships. If I can hide more things about myself, I am in a better position to negotiate.
However, as I follow a few startups along their journey, my perception of transparency gradually changed. The startups which influenced me the most were Buffer and Product Hunt (I say Product Hunt but it was mainly the way Ryan Hoover built and is running it that has influenced me).
I started to believe that transparency is beneficial and not disadvantageous, and began working on being more transparent.
Transparency Leads To Better Team Performance
Joel Gascoigne of Buffer wrote an insightful post on transparency in his company, Why we have a core value of transparency at our startup, and why the reasons don’t matter and shared the benefits he has seen with transparency.
The first benefit he shared resonates with me the most:
Transparency breeds trust, and trust is the foundation of great teamwork.
Research (Palanski, Kahai and Yammarino, 2010) has shown that transparency within a team leads to trust, which in turn, brings about better team performance:
Using Partial Least Squares (PLS) analysis, we found in both studies that team transparency was positively related to team behavioral integrity, which in turn was positively related to team trust. We also found evidence of a positive relationship between team trust and team performance.
The good thing about trust is that it is self-reinforcing. According to Frederic Laloux in his book, Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness:
If you view people with mistrust (Theory X) and subject them to all sorts of controls, rules, and punishments, they will try to game the system, and you will feel your thinking is validated. Meet people with practices based on trust, and they will return your trust with responsible behavior.
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At the core, this comes down to the fundamental spiritual truth that we reap what we sow: fear breeds fear and trust breeds trust.
As cliche as it sounds, trust is important to a team and its performance. For there to be trust, transparency is essential.
Better Long Term Relationships
Apart from better team performance, I feel that the trust created through being transparent has another advantage. It allows us to build better long term relationships in both business and personal life.
Business Relationships
From the business point of view, trust from customers, suppliers and partners are very important.
Let me share a personal story regarding the importance of trust from customers from a customer’s perspective.
Due to my injury, I have to visit the physiotherapist once a week and it costs me £30. To put things into perspective, £30 is a lot for me as a student as I can buy a week’s worth of groceries and snacks with that amount.
The sad truth about healthcare businesses is that the long I take to recover, the more money they would make (in the short run). So it’s easy to question if my physiotherapist is doing her best to treat me or trying to prolong the duration of my treatment.
Fortunately, my physiotherapist has gained a lot of trust from me such that I have gone for about 5 sessions and am still going. She was transparent about how she was not sure which is the best treatment for me (because my body may respond differently from other’s), went through all the various treatments with me and also consulted her colleague who was in the clinic at that time.
(Updated 19/3/15: I visited the physiotherapist today and she decided not to charge me as she felt that it was taking too long for my knee to recover and even referred me to another physiotherapist. While they both work in the same clinic, I believe that she would lose her commission when I undergo treatment with another physiotherapist.)
And because I have so much trust in her, I know that I would visit her again if I ever need to (as much as I don’t want to be injured again). Trust leads to long term relationship with customers.
This highlights the importance of trust from customers. While my story is about the healthcare industry and from a consumer’s point of view, I believe that it applies to other industries and to relationships with suppliers and partners as well.
Personal Relationships
Trust in personal relationships is important too.
I would not want to be in a friendship or relationship where I have to second guess the other party’s intentions. I don’t think that that would be a healthy relationship.
Being transparent also shows our respect for the other person.
Here’s another personal story: recently I shared an idea with a Twitter friend, Lucas Gordon, who is working on his 12 Apps in 12 Months Challenge. He likes the idea and we are thinking of working together for it. He would build the app while I would market it.
In his first email to me, he talked about what he wants to get out from our collaboration and brought out the topic of revenue sharing. His transparency with me made me feel respected and keen to work with him!
In exchange, apart from sharing my thoughts on revenue sharing and marketing, I told him that I’m not very good with marketing yet and the fact that I’m still a student so I would have to juggle my school work too.
This is only the start of the relationship but I believe that being transparent right from the start would help in forming a long term friendship ☺
Spreading The Virtue
I believe that it is possible to and we should spread this virtue. I don’t think that it is naive to think this way.
I was reminded of the starfish story:
A man was walking along a deserted beach at sunset. As he walked he could see a young boy in the distance, as he drew nearer he noticed that the boy kept bending down, picking something up and throwing it into the water.
Time and again he kept hurling things into the ocean. As the man approached even closer, he was able to see that the boy was picking up starfish that had been washed up on the beach and, one at a time he was throwing them back into the water.
The man asked the boy what he was doing, the boy replied,” I am throwing these washed up starfish back into the ocean, or else they will die through lack of oxygen.
“But”, said the man, “You can’t possibly save them all, there are thousands on this beach, and this must be happening on hundreds of beaches along the coast. You can’t possibly make a difference.”
The boy smiled, bent down and picked up another starfish, and as he threw it back into the sea, he replied
“Made a difference to that one”
Furthermore, it is not only about making a small difference. I feel that being transparent ourselves can create a positive ripple effect. Leo Widrich of Buffer puts it nicely in his latest blog post, The small ripples we create:
I recently read a quote from Headspace co-founder Rich Pierson, where he said:
“Say you slam a door in someone’s face. Maybe you’re not even conscious of it. And that ruins their morning, and they go on into their office and shout at somebody. That’s a tiny moment, but it ripples out. People say, ‘How are you going to improve the health and happiness of the world?’ Well, if you’ve got millions of people being more mindful of tiny moments like that in their day, yeah: The world will look slightly different.”
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Conversely, the more positive ripples we create, the more random acts of kindness, where we help strangers, take great are of our friends and loved ones, the more positivity we’re bringing into the world, which will equally affect us and make our lives better.
Buffer’s and Ryan Hoover’s belief in transparency and acts of transparency made me believe in transparency. This means that there’s one more supporter of transparency. And I believe that there are a lot more people who were influenced by them.
In addition, they are not only the companies who are inspiring others with transparency. Companies like Baremetrics, Everlane and SumAll are also being very transparent, which I believe helps to spread the virtue.
Now that you have read my post, I hope that I have influenced how you think about transparency too ☺
In conclusion, I believe in transparency because:
- Transparency breeds trust; and
- Trust leads to many benefits such as better team performance and healthier long term relationships
We might not change the world, but by playing our part to be more transparent, we can help to spread the value and make the world a better place to live in.
If you enjoyed this post, you would make my day if you hit the “Recommend” button below! Thanks ☺
(This is my 8th blog post of my 30in30 challenge — 30 blog posts in 30 days. Through this challenge, I hope to feel comfortable and more confident with writing and become better at writing.
This post would be reposted on my personal blog, www.AlfredLua.com.)
