Hiding Behind Hierarchy

This article is part of group conversation involving several dozen contributors in the Step into the Spotlight LinkedIn group.  I like the group be case the members have the audacity to engage.  It is not cacophony of communication but a community for thoughtful conversation.  This portion applies to nonprofits but the debate could be applied to everything from corporations to countries.

The simple debate is culture before transparency or transparency before culture.  Or put another way people before process or process before people.

From my perspective the culture of an organization is reflective of the systems the organization embraces.  I just wrote a note to the president of one group that I am scheduled to speak to.  Reviewing my pending posts in their LinkedIn group I found seven.  The process that they have adapted for reviewing and approving postings generates emotions and emotions create cultures.  I shared with the president that this system makes me appear unresponsive and feel disrespected.

What I would have preferred to do is to post my dissatisfaction for all members or at least all board members to see and evaluate without the distortion of either people or process.  In my understanding of Governance Policy no single board member should have the authority to exercise their personal preference unless explicitly directed by the board in the form of a written and voted upon policy.

The solution I believe is transparency.  People are dishonest by design.   Read any of Dan Ariely’s research  Part is intentional and a majority is just simply the way our brain takes short cuts.  There are almost 100 defined biases and heuristics that distort our perception.  The only way that I am aware of to counterbalance our mental myopia is through transparency.  When we give all vested parties an interest in the most productive outcome the best solutions will emerge.

i.e.  When Salesforce began as one of the first SAS companies their “Achilles’ Heel” was up-time.  Every time they had an outage of any kind their competitors (and the media) would pounce on this appalling act of nonperformance that must surely be reflective of underlying insufficiencies.  The solution was transparency.  SF made that “Achilles’ Heel” into a tendon of truth by creating a live report available to everyone including their competitors.  This put their team on the line for peak performance and was absolutely undeniably honest.

So to my conclusion, that I would like to aerate, is that organizations have a simple binary decision.  They either agree to be honest or continue to be dishonest.  Science shows that objective honesty is an absolute impossibility from even the most impartial individual but the best approximation of accuracy can be achieved through the combined intelligence of a large enough group of diverse people invested in the optimum outcome.   Read Predictive Index

P.s.  The professional group I spoke of in frustration earlier currently has a 6% relevance rating by employees.