Employing Differences, Episode 205: How much transparency?

[00:00:00] Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals. 

[00:00:11] Paul: I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:00:12] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig.

[00:00:13] Paul: Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, how much transparency?

[00:00:22] Karen: So transparency is in this day and age, often a value. It is a thing that we think we should do, and we think it's a good idea and it's useful. And I want to point out that transparency is not an on-off switch. This isn't like pregnancy, you are or you aren't. Transparency has a range. 

[00:00:41] Karen: And we need to be thoughtful about where we want to be in that range. And just to give a sense of how this can go wrong, if you said we want total transparency, you want all the transparency we could have, we'd probably literally record every conversation we have and play it for everybody, like we'd spend every hour of every day just reading emails about what each other are doing and sharing. And I had a conversation with Paul that didn't actually come to any conclusion, but I'm just letting you know I had the conversation and we talked about these three topics.

[00:04:14] Karen: And I think you can see quickly how this is a ridiculous level of transparency. And aside from what people know or not, just the process of letting it be known would be so disruptive to the work that we would never go that way. And at the other end, we can do a total blackout. We don't ever tell anybody anything that we're doing, they just figure it out from the results at some point. And this is the thing that I think used to be more common, actually, in business and hierarchical environments. And we're realizing, actually, it really helps the rank and file folk to know what's going on higher up.

[00:01:49] Karen: And they're more likely to support it if they know what it is and all of that kind of thing. And so we probably don't want to be at either of those extremes, but there's a lot of space between them. And you can get too close to one or too close to the other. You can get too dark and you can get too much stuff going out. And what we want to explore today is how do you figure out where the transparency should be? How much transparency do we need about this thing at this time? 

[00:02:20] Paul: I worked with a manager at one point who largely believed in the value of transparency. And he said, we need to be clear about what's going on with various things.

And then at times he would say, well, I don't really want to talk with the team about this thing because it's going to distract them, because it's not a thing that they need to worry about. And I think that's where the, the this gets a little difficult, right, because we can actually have a different judgment about whether or not something is necessary or distracting, whether or not people need to know. And it would be helpful for them and it would help them to do their jobs. 

[00:02:58] Paul: It would help them to make decisions about things that are affecting them. And when it really would just be too much information, too much noise. And I think that's that's usually the place kind of your point about those two extremes, like that's the thing that can happen, right? When there's too much coming at us, then we can't focus on the things we need to focus on. And that's a case where that, that level of radical transparency of, of everybody knows about everything is just overwhelming and it's distracting. And at the same time, it's like when we don't have the relevant information that's useful to us in the work that we're doing and the decisions that we're making and things like that, when we don't have access to those things, that's where we get into trouble on that end of the spectrum.

[00:03:35] Paul: So I think there is something there for me around the given, given that we're at a particular point on that spectrum, which direction might we want to move? Like, are we in the right spot? Do we want to increase transparency because we're seeing things that are telling us that people don't have the information that they need? Or are we seeing things where we maybe want to change the way we make the information available, not necessarily hide it because people are getting overwhelmed or distracted by it?

[00:04:07] Karen: You know, I think trust comes up here a lot, that when you have a higher trust environment, you can rely more on more casual transparency, which is to say, I'll learn about it in conversations. It will come up. And also there's a piece about people think that in order to be transparent, we have to say it out loud at a meeting. Well, meetings are pretty expensive time, actually. I'm pretty protective of time at meetings. I think we don't want to spend time at meetings unless we really like I think it's sometimes the slowest way to do things. And we only want to do it if there's a really good reason to use that everybody's together kind of time for that thing.

[00:04:44] Karen: And that's a very different approach than it's in a place anybody could find it. If somebody is interested, it's available to them. It's not behind a locked door. They don't have to go say, mother, may I? They can get to it and they know how to get to it. And the piece that gets tricky about that is also they know it's there. So the idea that it's not some big decision got made, nobody got told about it, but it was, you know, in the notes they could have read them and they had no idea they should read them. That doesn't work. But it's in the notes. And we sent, you know, there's a five page decision or something with all the information about it.

[00:05:22] Karen: And we sent everybody an email that said a decision got made about this. We give it to you in two sentences. And if you want to know the detail, this is where you can find it is that sort of middle-ground transparency. Everybody knows they can get it and they don't have to. So they can. And some of this is that trust of we believe people will decide for themselves which things they need to know and that they'll do a good job of that.

[00:05:46] Paul: Part of the key there for me is the accessibility of the information, right? If it's, you know, well, in theory, anybody can get to this, but it's seventeen clicks through here and you need to enter this password and you need to go do this thing. And it's only open on Tuesdays or, you know, as Douglas Adams said once, you know, stuck in the back of a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying beware of the leopard. Like, yes, it's there, but it's not particularly accessible.

[00:06:10] Paul: And I think sometimes we, we say that we're being transparent about stuff, but we're but we're putting barriers in front of, you know, where there's sometimes the cases where we may be legally required to make certain things available and transparent, but not necessarily super accessible. And I think that's again, it goes back to my, my case of of are people getting the information they need in order to, to make good decisions? And and oftentimes when I talk with groups about transparency, I I talk about how transparency can be really useful for not necessarily resolving disagreements, but recognizing that, hey, we're all working from the same data. We may come to different conclusions about it, but if you and I are trying to figure out something and we don't, we don't have access to the same information, then it's, then it's actually pretty unlikely that we're going to come to similar or compatible conclusions.

[00:07:04] Paul: And so transparency can be really useful in terms of helping us to have fewer conflicts about stuff because we're able to work from the same data.

[00:07:13 Karen: Yeah. And I think that like data sharing piece is is a really nice view, like thinking about who needs the data and how accessible is it? Is it accessible enough? And, you know, do they just need a reminder? Here's the, here's this thing that you maybe even read before, but maybe you're not thinking about. It's not transparent. If I have every reason to think you're not noticing that it's there, even if you theoretically knew that. So I think sort of getting into other people's heads about what will they do with this information if they have it?

 [00:07:48] Karen: And I feel like technology has made it so that the likelihood, I think the likelihood is that we have more information than we can handle. I actually think a lot of our efficiency is knocked down. I mean, how many of us could get so much more done if email just turned off and an email is a super useful tool. So I don't think we should just turn email off. 

[00:08:08] Karen: But one of the places where I think a transparency question comes up for me, and I will say most of the people I walk with in life land in a different place than I do on this, is do I hit reply or reply all to an email? And I can't tell you how many threads I've been on. And it's even worse if it's text, I got to say, where somebody posted a question or an informational piece and then fifteen people replied all to say, thanks, I'm really glad you told me that.

 [00:08:38] Karen: I don't want to see fifteen thank yous or, you know, somebody asks for information and then everybody replies all like if I send an email to everybody who might know the thing I need to know and then everybody replies all with their piece of it. That means everybody on that list is getting interrupted, say, ten times that day. Probably more useful if I send out my question, I get all my answers and then I reply once to the list with a composite.

 [00:09:06] Karen: Hey, if you want to know what I got, this is what's there. There's just going to be a lot more efficiency that way, I think. And so I think the reply all is in this value of transparency. And it actually, I think, ends up clouding things because inboxes are so full that there's we're just building a lot of clutter. So I think part of effective transparency is limiting the clutter and not just, well, in the name of transparency, everybody gets to see it isn't actually an effective thing, I think. 

[00:09:37] Paul: Yeah, because that it clouds what's going on, right? There's not clarity. Like, you know, if it's you know, we're making we're talking about this decision that we're going to get made, that's getting it made. Like if you see the whole process unfold in real time, that doesn't necessarily mean it's clear to you, as opposed to being able to say afterwards, here's the decision that got made. If you want to see how we got to the decision, it's over there. That is often more transparent, right? More clear. Obviously, you need to have a process where you've built in points where people can, you know, catch up and say, "Oh, wait, wait a minute." Like you don't want to just go through that whole process and see.

 [00:10:16] Paul: But yeah, that that clarity is an important element of transparency because otherwise it's clouded, right? Otherwise you don't really know what's going on. There's not enough signal. There's there's a lot of noise. You know, the other thing that I'll say is that transparency can also be problematic because we do different things when we know people are watching. And this is this is where we kind of shade over a little bit into talking about confidentiality, which we talked about on Episode 185. We talked a little bit about what confidentiality is and things like that.

 [00:10:44] Paul: Right. There are times when we want to make, you know, the result of this process transparent, but we don't necessarily want to reveal everything that went into it because we know that that might have some adverse effects, right? That people might not be as forthcoming with, with their data, that they, they might, you know, not feel comfortable disagreeing in certain situations, like when, when people know they're being observed, people behave differently, not necessarily for the better. And so I think that's another place where we need to be.

[00:11:16] Paul: We need to be careful and need to be clear about why we value transparency. What is it that we're hoping to get out of making this this clear and transparent? And are we by overemphasizing, not just creating a lot of clutter for people, but also creating an environment where people feel they're being watched? 

[00:11:34] Karen: Yeah, I think kind of where we're aiming for here is that the ideal thing with transparency is that if I have information, I am thoughtful about who will find it useful. I try not to hide it, probably, unless is there a good reason to hide it? There might be. But if there's not, make it possible for people to find it in ways that they might expect to. And who needs to attend to it? Who needs it to be put in front of them? And how do I do that in the least disruptive way possible? And I'm going to get it wrong a good bit of the time. And here's why.

[00:12:0] Karen: Because what we just said is that the ideal thing with transparency is for me to know what you need. And I'm never going to be one hundred percent on that. And so I think I just want to point to really good transparency practices are not embodied entirely in a policy. There may be certain things that we all agree. We post here, you know, things that we do for transparency. But, but the tricky bits about transparency are in the space between. 

[00:12:36] Karen: They are one hundred percent in the relationship and the vulnerability piece of sharing what I think would be useful, even if it doesn't feel complete or safe to me to do that. The vulnerability piece of saying, "Hey, I think you have some information that I'd like and you haven't given it to me. And would you be willing to?" And when I feel shut out of something to go about that with curiosity of, I wonder why they didn't share that with me as opposed to, you know, darn it. They're interfering with my work and, you know, all of that accusation piece. So big surprise, vulnerability and curiosity are in this episode. But I just really want to point to transparency. 

[00:13:13] Karen: Isn't that we talk about it enough to get the policy down? And now we know because transparency is always about making some guesses about how much is useful and how much is clutter. And we're going to guess wrong some of the time. So it's more about having that open communication and pausing maybe now and again in retrospective to say, "Hey, did you know enough about this stuff? Would you have rather I shared more?" And even knowing, you know, you're a person who wants to see every thread of the email, and I'm a person who does not want to see every thread. I want the summary at the end so it can even be personalized. So the thing that will work perfectly with one person won't always work with another. So I just want to name this is not a figure it out once and get it right thing. It's just not.

[00:13:57] Paul: And the other last bit around that, you know, is there's also there's a cost to creating the transparency around stuff like we actually need to put this into a format that other people can digest. We need to summarize meetings. We need to do these things. And sometimes people want to, you know, they demand, in some cases, a level of transparency around stuff where going back to the point around, like, well, what are you going to do with that information? It's like the, the, the effort that I would need to put forward to satisfy your desire for this information may be greater than I'm willing to do. And, and so we need to negotiate about that.

[00:14:35] Paul: All right. That's also a thing that lives in that space between and is in the relational piece is: being able to go, look, I know that you would love to be, you know, you can't be at this meeting. I know you would love to be there. I know that you want to know what happens about this. Also, like we're not going to record the meeting for you. Like there are costs to that that we're just not willing to bear. So here's what I'm willing to do. Are you okay with that? Like, can you live with it? I know it's not your preference. Being able to do that kind of relational work as well to negotiate around the various needs in play, I think, are also really important.

 [00:15:09] Karen: Yeah. And I do think that cost is so important. An example that I see a lot in my work is the administrators of the world think that the way we get transparency is in any team that's using community resources or whatever. They just post their minutes where probably send it to the group email when we had this meeting. Here's our minutes. And ideally posting an agenda in advance so that if somebody is interested in those topics, they can go to the meeting.

[00:15:33] Karen:This is all perfectly rational. And when you apply that to the maintenance team, the maintenance team is made up of people who really like to work with screwdrivers. These are not people who like to plan agendas and post minutes and so on and so forth. And if you say, in order to participate on the maintenance team, you must do these transparency things, I'm going to predict you won't have very many people on the maintenance team. And that's really bad because we actually care less about knowing what they're doing than we care that they do it. In this case, this is super important that they get out their screwdrivers and do the thing they want to do.

[00:16:07] Karen: And if we put requirements around transparency on that, we get into trouble in a hurry. So that's just the example of exactly what you're talking about. And it happens in more subtle ways, I think, in any group environment. But I think you're right. The cost of transparency is super important to pay attention to. 

[00:16:21] Paul: And that's a case where, like, what do we really care about? Well, probably what we really care about is how much money are they spending? There are things that we care about way more than the minutes of their meeting. Maybe we can be flexible about what information is. Again, what is really relevant to the people outside of that group? What is going to help us to make good decisions? If we know, for example, that we keep having problems with this particular garage, seven out of the last 12 problems have been with that. Maybe we want to think about what's going on there and a larger thing.

[00:16:58] Paul: And so, again, it's about that relevance filter rather than the requirement that we all follow the same policy. 

[00:17:05] Karen: So looking today at transparency and the tendency for groups to adopt a policy or a value around transparency that, yes, we want transparency, we're saying that we want some transparency, but it's not an on-off switch. There is a whole range of what transparency means. 

[00:17:25] Karen: There's a range of ways we might achieve it. And we want to be thoughtful about who needs the information and how much of the information do they need? Is it enough that they can get it? What is accessible enough? Or do we need to put it in front of them? Not only is it true that they can get it, but do they know that they can get it and that it exists, that kind of thing. But also paying attention to the cost.

[00:17:49] Karen: So what does it take to make those things happen? And are those costs a good match for the benefit, for the people, for the situation that we're in? And then recognizing that the tricky parts, the really rich parts about the transparency topic happen in the space between, which means we're going to get it wrong. There's going to be some friction. There's going to be clutter about it, because what works for me in terms of transparency will not be the same as what works for you.

[00:18:18] Karen: And what I'm willing to do in terms of transparency, or what I would assume to do in terms of transparency is likely to sometimes not match what would work well for you. And so we're going to have to be ready to negotiate that. We're going to have to be willing to have the conversations. 

[00:18:34] Karen: We're going to have to be vulnerable in those conversations. We're going to have to be curious in those conversations so that we can tweak and adjust and end up with a transparency that means everybody does have the information that they need to do the jobs that they're doing. And it doesn't come at too high a cost for the efficiency that we need to get our work done. 

[00:18:53] Paul: Yeah. Well, that's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:18:58] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnick. And this has been Employing Differences.