With all the recent news on government data collection, information flow, etc… I’ve been thinking about the issues of business transparency. All too often, when risks are the primary focus of management’s attention, I suspect that many executives feel that the best policy is to simply lock everything down. I also suspect that most policies are developed in response to issues, in a piecemeal manner rather than as part of a planned culture and strategy. While I don’t think that a business should be excessively transparent, there are significant benefit to holistically evaluating the cost/benefit of systematically investing in transparent practices in several areas:
- Strategy communications to generate PR and support
- R&D and Product Roadmap to support a market place
- Sales and Marketing communication to demonstrate leadership through success
- Anonymized customer data to articulate trends
- Customer satisfaction information to facilitate community, build consensus and drive improvements
- Personnel information to highlight activity, leadership and achievement
- Crisis management to enable organized response
In today’s information age, a company can gain some competitive advantages by creating goodwill and trust which can shape brand, reputation, engagement, collaboration and empower a company’s role in an industry. In addition, a track record of transparency and trust is an incredibly helpful platform during crisis rather than sudden, isolated, responsive openness. Few companies systematically manage their business transparency and they leave value on the table and are not well prepared for when the information age shines a spotlight on them.
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