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RADICAL TRANSPARENCY
Thanks to technology, transparency – both inside organizations and between organizations and those they serve – has become a big issue. How do you cope with your business communications if everything you say might one day be made public knowledge?
If the best way to be safe is to be open – how far can you push this? It is a slightly facile response, but when asked years ago where my office shredder was, I responded that I had a much more cost effective solution – I didn’t say anything I regretted that much. In fact online I recommend that people assume that if you have written something on a computer then someone else will at some time be able to see it. If you don’t want someone to see what you have written, don’t write it on a computer. Does this mean you can’t write about anything? No, but it does mean you have to think harder about what you are writing, where, and why. Am I allowed to say what I am writing? Am I happy with what I am writing? Am I prepared to stand by it in the future? What do I expect people to do with what I have written and who do I expect to read it? This accountability and thoughtfulness is not a bad thing.
Transparency inside organizations isn’t easy. In fact one of the biggest risks is people sharing things inadvertently. Corporate document systems attempt to manage what is visible to whom, but managing this is a challenge. In addition people are naïve about search and assume that everyone wants to be able to search everything. ...
