Radical Corporate Transparency

Given the push back I get when I suggest thinking about why we keep salary figures secret, I wonder what the reaction will be to the piece in the October Harvard Business Review where Dave Balter, CEO of BzzAgent describes his approach to what he calls "radical corporate transparency." (By the way, I love the push back. Keep it coming! It helps me to deepen my thinking and makes for good conversation.)

Balter talks mostly about corporate blogging and sharing more than the conventional wisdom would deem prudent, like sharing internal sales presentations, or when one of the employees shared in a blog that he  thought the boss might be cheap (because he didn't pick immediately pick up the tab for lunch). I love Balter's comment about the sales presentations: "If a competitor wants to see our slides, so what?"

I love the "so what" question. That was really my intention in raising the salary thing--not that you MUST release all your salary information, but that you should know why and that you should take a good hard look at some of the assumptions you have about the pros and cons. When the status quo becomes so ingrained you won't even question it, then we've got a problem. Balter's rationale for being radically transparent:

I realized that companies put rules into place to hide their ideas. They think the rules give them control over people and markets. But that's totally untrue today. There are so may communication routes that you can't possibly control the information flowing through them. Furthermore, attempts at secrecy prevent the company from making use of those information flows. You can't always foresee the benefits of letting ideas out in to the world, but they often far outweigh any harm that may result.

There is that pesky myth of control again. Sometimes the underlying thought process has flaws, which results in tactics that don't work, even though they seem to "make sense" (e.g., controlling information flow). I also like his experimental approach. He goes in not exactly knowing how things will turn out, but he learns along the way. His current experiment is with office space. An executive's office opened up, so he made it available a week at a time to ANYONE in the organization. He's now looking at how offices impact communication and motivation.

Comments

[Michael E. Rubin]

Jamie,

I was going through my old blogs and old feeds today, I noticed that the BeeLog hadn't been updated since November.

This is especially surprising considering the timing of the HBR piece. The company's BeeLog even has an about page that promises complete transparency: "In a world where companies often hide the truth, and marketers have been known to disguise the facts, we thought we'd try something a little different. The folks at BzzAgent have decided to publicize the company's inner workings. We believe in truth in marketing, and what better way to prove it than to show you exactly how we’re going about our daily business."

I'm not trying to cause any problems. I'm just genuinely curious to find out what's going on. Do you know what's up? Why isn't the company blogging anymore -- especially right after this HBR piece came out?

...Michael
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Disclosure: I used to work at WOMMA, where Dave Balter is a founding board member. I now work for GasPedal, and this is my personal opinion.