Why Build Nelumbo? (2 of X)
This series speaks directly to those considering joining Nelumbo’s team. Background on the series is at the bottom of this post.
In our first post we talked about who is suited for the task at hand — adventurers, inventors, folks on the front line, and prize fighters. We believe the pursuit of a transparency first organization will attract these people, who will perpetuate and improve our approach. Here is what transparency first means to us and how we approach it.
We envision an organization where each individual has the autonomy and information needed to do their best work at every moment. Autonomy means the trust and confidence to carry out the work; information is anything and everything needed to do the right work, from technical data to strategic plans to our financial status. This utopian vision of productive, creative, and free pursuit of exciting results empowers the most talented people to apply themselves to the highest leverage work. We think of operating this way as a “transparency first” organization.
Because no utopia is a reality, we have to pursue this organization each day, understanding that there will always be room for improvement. This pursuit also gets harder with growth and success: large companies tend to have a mediocre track record on transparency. This means it is even more important to pursue a dream outcome rather than strive for an individual state. This is a constant investment, every day.
What do we specifically mean by transparency first?
- Information or decisions must be explicitly identified as sensitive when first communicated, otherwise the information can and will be provided to any team member that requests it
- Information is made publicly available to anyone on the company registry unless protected by HR law, specific confidentiality requirements from customers, or government regulations
- Direct feedback on performance, ideas, and results is expected and rewarded¹
Here are several tangible ways we practice this mindset at Nelumbo:
- We openly discuss these questions with our team, and strive to be very clear when the answer at a given moment is unclear or undecided:
→Funding (what is our runway? where / why are we making investments?)
→ Space (are we changing HQ anytime soon?)
→ Product / market fit (do customers actually love what we offer?)
→ Hiring (what is the point of XYZ roles?)
- Every month we have an all hands team lunch and talk about progress, where our challenges are, any changes to our plan, and our financial position
- Flat structure — anyone can approach anyone else at Nelumbo. We emphasize this in onboarding, often setting up 1:1 conversations for new hires with >15 people across the organization
- As the last step in our hiring process, every interviewer sits around the table and we all share our perspective of the finalist candidates. No voice is prioritized other than the hiring manager for the role, who does not make a decision until all perspectives have been heard
- We default to trust in purchases, reimbursements, time planning and other decisions with financial impact
It is very apparent when people haven’t had this experience in prior roles. In recent interviews at Nelumbo, candidates most often cited our team’s candor as one of the reasons they are excited to help build this company. In several cases this was a direct and stark contrast with their previous experiences. Top tier talent is especially impacted when organizations aren’t transparent, intentionally or otherwise.
As a response to these observations, I put the post below on LinkedIn last week, and it seems to have struck a nerve, receiving over 10X more reactions and views than the average of all my other posts in the past 12 months. I am not pleased about this because it got some attention… I am THRILLED because this is data showing the latent demand for what we’re talking about!
To be fair, there are genuine points to be made that full transparency can’t be the operating mode for some circumstances, like government agencies and contractors. Unfortunately many companies that are able to put transparency first get stuck in a murky set of classification systems which ultimately break down leaving individuals to make their own decisions of what and how to disseminate information. This causes inconsistency across the organization, exacerbating distrust. We are certain that a large number of these companies, and absolutely the majority of start-ups, would benefit more by switching to a transparency-first approach.
We are also realistic that transparency inside the organization doesn’t mean immediate transferability outside the organization. At Nelumbo every team member (including myself) have signed standard Intellectual Property and Confidentiality agreements with the company, as legal protection for trade secrets, patents, and other information-based assets valuable to the business. Our main point is that a transparent culture is itself an asset as team members are more likely to work together to create and protect more value for a company with this culture.
Our view is that transparency first as an operating mode will be table stakes in any successful organization of the future. posts like this one will not be a useful mechanism to compete for talent! Like the villain Syndrome from Pixar’s The Incredibles says: “When everyone’s a super… no one will be”. When most major companies rewrite culture and policy to reflect a transparency-first approach, it will no longer be a superpower and companies will compete on a different basis to attract talent.
At present we have a long way to go before transparency first is viewed as a default. In the interim, companies have an opportunity to take the risk and see the rewards of a better way to build. We look forward to meeting the people that want to build Nelumbo into a great example of this new future.
Acknowledgements:
My thanks to Andrew Brentano for reviewing this article, Allen Ashton for sourcing the cover image and reviewing content, the LinkedIn community for sparking the opportunity, and the Nelumbo team for living and learning this method every day.
Background on the series
This post is one of many. The series is of undefined length because a great organization should have ever more compelling reasons to be built. We believe that the story of a company, and how it is told, is highly influential to the outcome the company can achieve. Unfortunately, often the story that potential new team members receive (as opposed to customers or investors) is a scattershot of information from different points in time across different platforms. If we consider (people’s) time to be the most valuable resource, why don’t we do a better job curating stories to attract it?
This is what we want to solve with this series. An evolving story told directly to potential new team members that they can use as one way to consider joining us on our journey. For obvious reasons, no company can put everything in the public domain but we value transparency at Nelumbo and will strive to make any content as actionable as possible to you, the future member of our team. We hope to see many other organizations adopt this approach. Please let us know if you see others that already do a great job of this, we are interested to learn from them!
Footnotes
- While direct and harsh feedback regarding ideas and concepts is always welcome, we never tolerate attacks directed towards individuals at Nelumbo
