Paul Joyce, CEO of TV dashboard application Geckoboard, argues that companies need to focus on building a data-driven, transparent culture to succeed
‘Transparent culture’ is a term so used and abused by businesses it has almost lost its meaning.
It’s easy to rattle off, but what does it actually mean? Does it even matter? And how does a company even begin to build a transparent culture?
What is transparency?
Transparency means two things. Honest communication and effective communication.
Employees need to have access to key company data, and that the data needs to be presented in a way which is easy to understand.
To be transparent, these rules need to apply at all times.
It’s much easier to share information when the business is performing well, however many managers will shy away from sharing the full picture when it isn’t so rosy.
It can be a daunting prospect, but an open door data policy will always beat keeping employees in the dark.
We recently conducted research which showed us that 90% of employees would rather hear bad news than no news.
Why does transparency matter?
Open access to information allows each employee to take control of their work and make decisions free from unnecessary bureaucracy.
It creates a sense of collective responsibility. After all, if they don’t know things are not going to plan, how can they be expected to change?
The context of your business can change a lot in a short space of time and your team needs to be able to monitor and react to changes in real-time, rectifying an issue before it escalates.
The way you communicate with your team won’t just impact performance. It can have a substantial impact on team morale too. Our research also found that one in four employees have quit a job because they felt left out in the cold by bosses who failed to share company information – a pretty serious consequence!
An open-data culture reverses this sense of isolation by uniting staff behind clear goals.
Katie Burke, VP at Hubspot puts it well: “Transparency done right will help you recruit top talent, retain exceptional employees, and foster innovation throughout your company, and every organization can benefit from that.”
As well as helping you keep hold of staff, transparency can help drive a business forward. An open data policy will inspire fresh ideas and encourage open conversations based on business goals leading to new solutions for old problems.
James O’Toole and Warren Bennis of the Harvard Business Review back this up: “Companies can’t innovate, respond to changing stakeholder needs, or function efficiently unless people have access to relevant, timely, and valid information”.
How do you achieve a transparent culture?
Think about displaying your data somewhere very public. Some businesses have begun using TV screens in the middle of the office to display key data all employees should be aware of.
This way every team member can see the impact their work is having on overall business performance and understand how they can take action to help the company achieve their goals.
For a transparent culture to be effective, you also need to provide focus on the numbers that matter.
With so much information available in a modern business, it’s very easy to get lost in a deluge of data.
If you don’t provide a focus on the numbers that matter, an open data policy can become more confusing than it is useful. Therefore it’s crucial to define the measurements that are most important to success for your business. This means making sure that the company’s Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) are being tracked effectively.
A good way of choosing your KPIs is to ask yourself, “Why do I exist?”. Think of your main stakeholders, typically your clients and your investors. Then ask what are the one or two things that they expect from you?
Finally, it’s important to make sure that the data you are sharing is easy to understand. Not just understandable to the data scientists in charge of crunching the numbers, but understandable to everybody in the business no matter how data savvy they are.
Number heavy spreadsheets or complex charts will likely end up in the digital/physical trash and won’t register as a real attempt to be open.
Share the information which has the most impact on the business and place a focus on that.
Building a transparent culture will create a more efficient business where your employees are fully focused on the same goals as you.
Whereas an opaque culture will lead to staff leaving due to mistrust, a lack of focus across the business on top line goals and ultimately all decisions landing on your desk.
It will take time and effort, but once achieved it will create efficiencies which far outweigh that effort over the course of your growth story.