Org. Culture | Transparency vs Privacy

When is it good to be transparent, and when is privacy vital?

Transparency has been the newest trend in the development of a working culture. More companies are introducing transparency as a way to create open communications between management and their staff. Transparency in this context is about the behavior of management and the employees in regards to their internal work habits and communications. It’s about information sharing, clarity of communication and accuracy.

It is beneficial for the companies as they develop more trust for the managers, but what about the rest of the employees? Of course, transparency encourages the sharing of knowledge, honest and constructive feedback, and increases collaboration amongst multiple teams. With such open communicative channels, what could be the consequences — could too much transparency in everyday work practices result in feeling of loss of privacy? So the main question is — what is the right balance between a transparent working culture and an individual’s privacy? When is there too much transparency and at which point is privacy jeopardized?

There are two sides to every story

On the one hand, transparency is a great tool for engaging employees as discussed earlier; on the other hand, transparency introduces the perception of being watched and criticized. This is a transparency paradox described by Ethan Bernstein, Assistant Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School. It is something that potentially increases “hiding” and counterproductive behavior from employees.

To bring this idea to life, let’s consider Michele Foucault’s philosophical idea of a Panopticon as an example — a prison design that increases surveillance of prison cells using a centrally located watchtower. In this scenario, the prisoner never knows whether someone is inside it or not; therefore, enforcing self-surveillance for prisoners. Self-surveillance is meant to decrease negative behavior, yet it only magnifies the notion of power of authority and possibility of harsh discipline. This physical transparency — being exposed — can be easily translated into today’s working environments. The more you share your work, your ideas, your results, the more you may feel watched, or controlled and may feel a build up of your privacy being compromised.

It may turn into the need to hide mistakes, avoid confrontations, and retain crucial information as a way to retain own identity and control.

With the possibility of this counterproductive behavior to occur, is there any ways that the management can help in creating the right balance?

Finding the balance between transparency and privacy

There are four boundaries that Bernstein introduced in order to find that right balance, and with some aspects of privacy can actually help people be more productive. The companies that adhered to these boundaries were more productive and innovative and the employees within these visible boundaries were even more transparent as Bernstein concluded.

1. Boundary around individual teams — Create high transparency within single teams, yet create moderate boundaries with outside teams until that team is ready to share information and ideas across the company. This helps with minimizing external noise and influences before the product/idea is ready.
2. Boundary around feedback and evaluation — When feedback tools are separate from individual’s evaluation it decreases people’s defenses. It generates trust in management and others because evaluations will be formed based on crucially important feedback and not on minor errors, thus ensures employee’s attention to their actions, rather than feeling of being micromanaged regularly.
3. Boundary around decision rights and improvement rights — Allow for some people to make high-level decisions and others to have improvement rights as each right has different needs. Those with decision rights are looking for visibility and managing tasks, as opposed to those looking to make their products and processes better through new ideas and experimentation. This avoids giving power to a select few, less bureaucratic system of seeking approvals, and more collaboration towards a goal.
4. Boundary around period of experimentation — A block of time in which experimentation is key, and mistakes are welcome without any consequences. It’s an opportunity to test new ideas and to explore concepts without scrutiny, judgment, yet with support for trial and error.

These boundaries are an opportunity to create a safe, more private environment for the teams to work innovatively without external disruptions. It creates more collaborative and proactive teams, who later can showcase their work with greatest confidence. This is just a starting point for engaging your workforce, and creating trust amongst team and in management. Once this culture starts from inside the teams, it will transgress to multi teams across the organization to create a more open collaborative and rightfully done transparent culture.

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Originally published at thehumanprism.wordpress.com on June 18, 2016.