I read a great bumper sticker the other day that makes a potent point about the importance of transparency. “Politicians should dress like race car drivers. That way, we’d know who their corporate sponsors are.” Frankly, few people expect politicians to tell the unvarnished truth – Americans would have a collective coronary if they did. But there still may be hope for the business world to be more real, largely because the stakes are high enough to make it worth their while to be more authentic and transparent.

• Problems are solved faster
• Decisions are made sooner
• Work is done quicker
• Costs are controlled better
• Relationships are more real
• Performance levels are higher
• Teams are easier to build and sustain
• Employees are less skeptical and cynical

The classic slippery slope
One of my pet peeves when it comes to evasive communication is the traditional announcement that thousands of employees are being let go, discretely buried in a massive missive detailing a new direction that will “optimize corporate performance.” A recent internal announcement by one of America’s best known companies is a case in point.

The announcement included oodles and gobs about how smart the company is, but there’s an old adage that “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Buried three-fourths of the way into the 1,000-word tome is the notice that 12,500 people will be let go over the next year as part of this strategic business move. The subsequent “caring” comment consisted of one sentence: “These decisions are difficult for the team, and we plan to support departing team members with severance benefits.”

Seriously? That’s it? I’d love to hear the justification for that clipped consolation comment beyond the desire to downplay the impact on people and head off the critics. Part of me likes to think that the guy who wrote it didn’t even bother to consult a communication professional who understands how to strike the right balance between context and compassion. The hopeful side of me wants to believe that other types of communication took place with employees to answer the big questions on their minds, like “Am I going to keep my job?”… “What’s going to happen to me?”… “Where will I go?” – and other similar “WIIFM”s. Somehow, I doubt it.

Put Your Transparency to the Test
So what does transparency look like?

• Stop trying to sound like a boardroom brainiac. Talk straight and talk first about the things that matter most to employees and customers, not financial analysts.

• Open the books to employees. Show them the critical numbers that are relevant to business outcomes, and help them understand how their day-to-day work impacts those numbers.

• Replace one-way information distribution with interactive conversations that foster an open dialogue.

• Challenge your policies about what information you’re willing to make available to employees so it’s as close as possible to what one Baldrige Award winning company decided on – “no secrets.”

• Use the “friends and family test” when you’re communicating with employees. Ask yourself if your spouse, your kids, your parents, your grandparents, or your friends and neighbors would understand – and believe – what you’re saying.

• Kill the jargon, and remember the quote by the renowned business consultant, Warren Bennis, who said, “The use of buzzwords anesthetizes you to the truth.” If your communication doesn’t sound like the kind of conversation you’d have with someone across the table, it’s probably littered with blah-blah corp-speak.

In the end, transparency comes down to a question of credibility. So next time you’re deciding how open to be with key stakeholders, ask yourself this question: Would you rather have people think of management as a race car driver or a politician?

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