What if you could have strong ties of trust within your organization? What if you didn’t miss opportunities to add value because you are always in the know? Let’s put down our copies of “The Prince” and start using the power of our social technologies to get real.
Some companies have internal social networks for collaboration efforts, most do not, and no company that I know of has leveraged their network for trust-creating transparency. Call it “CoPROfile” (or whatever you want), your company’s robust internal social network.
Features
Self-Managed and Opt-In Oriented
Trust cannot be forced. Members can share anything they are comfortable with and that they deem appropriate. Members have the opportunity to share personal interest, their resume and past and present projects along with updates, set-backs and victories. They can invite people to participate on a project, collaborate, create meetings and invite guests. They can share, here’s where it gets interesting, their latest performance appraisal, their salary information, and the areas where the organization needs improvement. Everyone has complete freedom to share and complete responsibility for what they share.
This feature is critical to the success of the network because it allows the network to evolve with the company’s culture. Leaders have the opportunity to lead by example by being open and honest about what they are working on. If the leadership agrees that total transparency is the way to go, then they can be the first to publish their salary information.
Gamified
While trust cannot be forced, participation can be encouraged. On the MIX we have Hackers, Mavericks, Top Mixers, etc. This is a form of gamification. On the network I am describing, members who are open and honest can earn titles like “Straight Shooter” or perhaps each members page would have a fading transparency percentage at the side, beginning with a dark black 0% Transparent transitioning to almost nothing, then “BAM!” a bright shining 100% Transparent.
Considering how quickly Facebook added half a billion active users, I believe people generally like to participate in this sort of thing; the trick is overcoming the “work” stigmatism. While Theory X managers are trying to invent new ways to keep people who are “on the clock” off of Facebook, Theory Y managers can be inventing ways to leverage their teams social energies to unlock potential and leave the Theory Xers in the dust!
Tiered Access
As trust cannot be forced; it also takes time to develop. People don’t generally “spill their guts” on the first date (at least not if they want a second date). Members who are brand new to the organization should not have immediate full access to everyone’s profile but should have a trust building period. Perhaps profile access is on a request basis until a member’s one year anniversary at which time full access is granted or maybe you can only get as much information as you give. Another option may be for each user to set boundaries on who can see what, like setting up groups on Facebook and assigning access privileges.
Confidential
What happens on the network stays within the organization. When you trust a friend with important and personal information, it is a gut wrenching betrayal of that trust if they share your info with others. For organizations operating in a competitive environment, and that’s just about all of us, betraying the confidence of the organization can have a painful emotional and financial impact. When you betray a friend they often terminate the friendship. When you betray your organization, they may terminate your membership.
Searchable
Are you thinking of doing a project on X? Find out if anyone else is too. Need someone with skill set Z on your team for the big project? Search all uploaded resumes to see who fits. Really! Do you know the education and experience of anyone who is not a direct report? You could.
Offline Mediators
Disputes happen and they can be particularly ugly and damaging when they take place in front of the masses on a social network. Fights or other poor behavior on the network that turns nasty needs to be handled face to face with offline mediators.
If you already have an internal network used for collaboration, you could start by building in some of the additional features that I have described and let management take the lead by being the first to get real. An easy first step may be opening up your calendar, which can be as simple as changing user preferences.
If you don’t have a network in place, it might be time to start building one… “If you build it they will come.”
This is a great hack and very timely given that many organizations are trying to regain the trust of their employees and customers after the financial crisis. I particularly like the feature “Searchable”, which encourages sharing of knowledge and skills and collaboration. Companies such as HCL Technologies have successfully implemented the 360 degree feedback process where the results of managers’ performance (including the CEO) are posted on the company’s intranet. They also share detailed financial data, encouraging employees to ask questions and provide ideas for improvements. The solutions in this hack will help more companies to adopt transparency.
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The idea of giving the employees complete freedom and full responsibility within the network is very intriguing. If the leadership of the company will truly buy into this idea and also become active participants in the internal social network, then I think this could be extremely successful in creating transparency. But it has to start from the top.
I thought you did a great job of outlining the features as well as giving a thorough analysis of the potential challenges.
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This is a very interesting hack. I agree that the features provide a clear structure for the network. It certainly outlines the first steps that an organization should take to create their own network and move toward a culture of transparency.
However, my concern is that does trust really increase in proportion with organizational transparency? In other word, should 100% transparent be the goal for an organization. There are many examples that prove transparency fosters innovation and builds trust but there are also many examples that show innovation has come from closely managed organizations and trust comes from clear vision and leadership. The challenges that you have listed certainly speak some of my concerns. For example, publishing pay information, even if after a thorough fairness test was conducted, there is no guarantee that network participants would perceive the pay structure as fair. Rational people often do irrational things when it comes to money.
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Transparency is the key to a company’s internal and external success. In order to do so there must be trust on both sides. I think that employees should have an advocate and/or a coach that they could confide in, especially during this type of company transformation. Transparency would seemingly give everyone a voice, in some form, thus improving company culture.
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Transparency in an organization is very important for the success of the organization and building trust in its people. However, I agree to the point that trust cannot be built in one day and will surely take time. I liked the idea of tiered access which will not only help organizations to gain trust in its people but also gives people a sense of responsibility towards the organization.
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I'm also a big fan of pay transparency. However, the benefit for me is about helping take peoples' focus off reward and moving this onto serving customers etc. And there is an aspect of trust to it too. But this is more about showing that the organisation deserves its employees' trust (because it pays people fairly) rather than because pay transparency builds trust itself.
I think if trust is the objective, there are probably a lot more important things to share than pay.
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Appreciate that the "features" provide a clear list of dimensions and issues. I'm a huge fan of transparency and we need more scaffolding like this to help us move organizations in this direction.
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I always say that trust takes a lifetime to earn and moment to break. Once broken, it's very challenging to earn back. This is the trouble with managers who often violate trust - either intentionally or not. I like transparency, and even more so, I like the idea presented in the "gamification" of allowing for people to "see" the content only clearly if you are completely open and transparent. How that would be moderated, defined, and administered is a question mark, but no doubt there is some "app" for that.
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Karl, This is being developed in the UK by local authorities. Social media is being used to leverage a council's limited (and shrinking) resources. http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/aio/17801438
Authorities and organisations are using it http://www.lgcomms.org.uk/blog/knowledge?blog=yammer
Brighton and Hove started with it back in 2009 (here is the link to a case study on it http://www.webyogi.co.uk/yammer-in-local-government-an-experiment-in-int...
The police force (Lincolnshire) that is using it has a policy on it. http://www.lincs.police.uk/Library/Freedom-of-Information/Information-Cl... Lots of companies are using it in USA according to www.yammer.com
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Thank you for sharing these links, there is some great info here. It looks like one of the benefits of transparency which I didn’t mention but that UK local governments are realizing is a faster response time. When your work is public there is a big incentive to handle tasks quickly and accurately.
Yammer is mentioned several times. I have friends who use Yammer in their organizations with varying success, but I have not used it myself. Yammer appears to be an excellent starting point and it seems to be flexible enough to leverage for trust and transparency. The folks I have talked to about Yammer say that it is not being leveraged for transparency in their organizations.
This might be a good place to take this conversation. Do we have any Yammer users out there whose organization has built in trust/transparency features?
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Karl, I like where you are going with this. Imagine a GTI - Gross Transparency Index for corporations? We already have a Gross Happiness Index so why not GTI?
The gaming aspect you propose is fascinating as well. It may be more compelling if senior management commits to things that can be measured/rated by the rank-and-file. Too often there is discontent about transparency and straight talk from management. Now we have ways to measure it--with the voice of employees.
On the flip--build ways for employees to be 100% accountable/responsible for their commitments and have a peer-to-peer system of rewarding points, particularly around transparency = risk taking = greater innovation.
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Very interesting hack, I share most views expressed here (I have been working in the CSN field for many years now). I think complete freedom and complete responsibility are indeed needed in today's complex corporate environments
Still, all this does not come without proper attention to people évolution, concerning their professional behaviours, technology skills and even their position about management honesty in all this process (at least in Europe). The time dimension of such a transformation is key, and when you need to invest in a long transformation, you need particularly strong and resilient leaders
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Very interesting hack, I share most views expressed here (I have been working in the CSN field for many years now). I think complete freedom and complete responsibility are indeed needed in today's complex corporate environments
Still, all this does not come without proper attention to people évolution, concerning their professional behaviours, technology skills and even their position about management honesty in all this process (at least in Europe). The time dimension of such a transformation is key, and when you need to invest in a long transformation, you need particularly strong and resilient leaders
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Transparency is my new favorite "primary" color.
Kenneth Arrow said that "trust is the lubricant of an economy." Markets cannot be efficient without trust among the participants. This seems true for individual firms within markets as well. How can a firm best use its human capital resources? Promote an environment of trust vertically and horizontally. Fundamentally this requires "transparent" sharing of knowledge and feedback on ideas. I especially benefited from reading Mr. Kammerer's ideas of how to use "social network" techniques to make this concept operational.
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The time is right for building trust through transparency. A new Maritz Poll conducted by Maritz Research showed 25% of the American workforce surveyed report having less trust in management than they did last year. The ideas shared in this hack not only begin to address the growing trust issue but also introduce innovative approaches, like gamification, for re-engaging employees.
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