It seems like in most communication decisions, being secretive loses you a lot more through misunderstandings and missed opportunities than you gain from control. At least, I've seen a lot of articles written asserting this, and my own experience backs it up.<p>I wonder if it's always true, or if not what the boundary conditions are. Apple, for example, seem to play on their secrecy quite well as a marketing technique, and it seems the Unity developers on that Reddit AMA had been cautioned against revealing planned features to avoid disappointing people.<p>The cynic in me thinks it makes you feel powerful and in control to have secrets, and that's the main reason why transparency is rare. I'd be interested to hear counter-examples, though - does anyone know cases where being secretive worked out to be a great business decision?
I'm not familiar with this stuff. Would someone please explain what types of information public companies can't share with their employees, and the thinking behind these regulations?
This approach is sometimes referred to elsewhere as Open-Book Management[1].<p>One key addition in full OBM is that staff are given basic training in management accounting -- ie, in reading financial statements and inferring performance from them.<p>This should fit the current enthusiasm for metrics perfectly. The three core financial statements (Income, Balance, Cashflow) are internationally-recognised metrics dashboards for business financial performance.<p>You can even build derived metrics (accounting ratios) to better understand particular parts of your business. And nothing stops you marrying those derived money metrics to your other metrics.<p>Basic accounting is really quite simple and illuminates a lot of business logic. I'd recommend it to anyone.<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-book_management" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-book_management</a>
A post was killed for no good reason. Reproduced here:<p>shorbaji 23 minutes ago | link | parent [dead] | on: Ridiculously Transparent<p>The debate of more vs. less transparency is not trivial. Regulatory and competitive considerations make this difficult. Sometimes it is simply human nature to be secretive - particularly when it comes to bad news.<p>The article focuses on transparency between management and employees. Transparency with customers and with the public is at least equally interesting.<p>A company can benefit from transparency. Heroku, for example, are transparent with their downtime (e.g. status.heroku.com). Another example is the case of AirBnB and the EJ debacle. Once AirBnB openly acknowledged that safety/security is a concern for landlords it adapted by rolling out an improved product (guarantees, safety features, etc).<p>Both of these are great examples of transparency at the core impacting the product and how it is marketed. These products are more valuable and more competitive because of transparency. Certainly this adds to revenues and likely the bottom line as well.<p>AirBnB could have adopted this approach earlier. So, the lack of transparency can be missed opportunity.
It's actually to keep people from trading on info before it's public. Every investor legally is entitled to get material info at the same time.<p>Being this brutally honest as a firm isn't easy. Sometimes you withhold for what seems to be good reasons - not scaring people, not distracting people, etc. Not everyone reacts well to such transparency. All this said, it did build a remarkably strong culture for them.
The debate of more vs. less transparency is not trivial. Regulatory and competitive considerations make this difficult. Sometimes it is simply human nature to be secretive - particularly when it comes to bad news.<p>The article focuses on transparency between management and employees. Transparency with customers and with the public is at least equally interesting.<p>A company can benefit from transparency. Heroku, for example, are transparent with their downtime (e.g. status.heroku.com). Another example is the case of AirBnB and the EJ debacle. Once AirBnB openly acknowledged that safety/security is a concern for landlords it adapted by rolling out an improved product (guarantees, safety features, etc).<p>Both of these are great examples of transparency at the core impacting the product and how it is marketed. These products are more valuable and more competitive because of transparency. Certainly this adds to revenues and likely the bottom line as well.<p>AirBnB could have adopted this approach earlier. So, the lack of transparency can be missed opportunity.