Please Skip the Spin

What This is About: There is a lot of talk about the importance of transparency and openness in organizations. I just put out a podcast about it! Yet, I think many leadership teams are still learning how to do this well. Too often “message control” from management is more about sharing information they want all team members to know, versus providing the details people really want. All of us desire the straight goods on how current events will likely impact us personally. Still, management often starts and plans internal communications top down. Of course, a well crafted internal communication system is multidirectional. Too often though, people wonder “what’s the spin or angle am I getting?” “Can I trust the communication?”

Furthermore, management can get trapped into a paternalistic “only tell them what they can handle or need to know.” In order to build trust and transparency, the assumptions regarding what constitutes open communication should change.

Why It’s Important: Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, has recently expressed public angst about trust issues at Google (read more here). Obviously as Google continues its mega growth and dominance, communication becomes more challenging. However, the size of the company is way less important than being consistent and open while sharing the “good, bad and ugly.” Google arguably got in trouble from the spin and/or lack of transparency on a number of high profile issues, including questionable financial settlements to executives who violated respect/harassment policies. If people believe the information provided by leadership is filtered, trust gets eroded dramatically. Before you know it, as has happened with Google, people will find ways to protest.

What I’ve Done About It: Those of you following our culture journey at the college know that we have been conducting a listening campaign with 25 culture champions leading the way. They have co-authored a Culture Report, and this week we will release it unvarnished to all employees. On another note, the college’s government funding was materially cut this past week. Within 24 hours of the announcement, we live streamed a question and answer session with all employees. We openly shared what we knew. Hopefully these are examples of building trust through transparency.

Think Big, Start Small, Act Now.

Lorne

One Millennial View: It’s understandable some things should remain on a “need to know basis” within companies. However, it’s amazing to hear about the distrust and shady dealings within companies like Google, Facebook, etc. There’s so much speculation! We don’t know the extent of what they know, collect, and exactly how their algorithms operate. You can imagine most of their employees have vague ideas as well. So, if there’s a spectrum between “complete open book,” and “top secret, covert ops, black list you Google,” if you’re not an organization dealing with world-changing, “get murdered for releasing this” information, just be cool and lean towards as much transparency as possible.
- Garrett

Blog 1,005

Edited and published by Garrett Rubis

Please Skip the Spin

Search Blog Posts:

Follow Us: