On transparency

When I tell people that I strive to write a short blog post every day, I am often asked where I find the inspiration.

My job is such that it, alone, could be my muse. But I do rely on other sources as well. One of them is a list of bookmarks saved in a folder titled “Thought-provoking” in my web browser. From CNN.com’s homepage to Wikipedia’s “On this day…”, I often find a kernel of an idea.

One of my bookmarks is the results page of a Google search for news related to corporate culture. As a Canadian by birth, today’s top result caught my attention: “What of CBC‘s strange corporate culture?” Based on the facts made public to date, it seems that the news organization fired one of its reporters for writing a book without getting the proper approvals. The move appears harsh considering what we know about the case and the way CBC handled previous matters.

Which brings me to this post and the topic of transparency. With all the communication tools available to managers and business leaders today, I find it deplorable that most don’t take advantage of them. When they do communicate with their team, they usually stick to financial and operational matters. Once or twice a year, perhaps they’ll remind people to complete their ethics training – but they won’t share their perspective on the training itself (that would be outside their scope of work). Few are those who ever talk about culture, policies, or controls. Fewer still open up about the problems they face and how they make decisions and the actions they take to implement those decisions. If these topics were discussed openly, if employees could see how the Machine works, imagine how different the culture would be and how fewer violations would occur.

And how a journalist might still have a job.