Transparency: How Leaders Create a Culture of Candor (J-B Warren Bennis Series)

When we speak of transparency and creating a culture of candor, we are really talking about the free flow of information within an organization and between the organization and its many stakeholders, including the public. . . . For information to flow freely within an institution, followers must feel free to speak openly, and leaders must welcome such openness.

No matter the official line, true transparency is rare.  Many organizations pay lip service to values of openness and candor, even writing their commitment into mission statements.  Too often these are hollow, if not Orwellian, documents that fail to describe the organization's real mission and inspire frustration, even cynicism, in followers all too aware of a very different organizational reality.

I was eager to read Transparency as soon as I saw the list of authors, all noted for the contribution to the leadership literature, and my eagerness compounded when I read the above-quoted excerpt.  The book, published in July 2008, just barely predated the legal layoffs (acknowledged and stealth), and reading it brings some interesting insight.

Transparency is defined to encompass candor, integrity, honesty, ethics, clarity, full disclosure, legal compliance and many other attributes that promote fair dealings.  The book's first few pages recount the story of outcry by Chinese citizen journalists who used Web 2.0 tools to oppose the location of a plant that would have produced toxic chemicals.  This forced transparency, made possible by technology such as the blogosphere and distribution of photos taken by cell phone, demonstrates that efforts to withhold information have become effectively impossible.  

In the past, organizations might have aspired to transparency, but those aspirations are realized with or without organizational approval today.

The authors hold that "[t]he leaders who will thrive and whose organizations
will flourish in this era of ubiquitous electronic tattle-tales are the ones who strive to make their organizations as transparent as possible. Despite legitimate moral and legal limits on disclosure, leaders should at least aspire to a policy of 'no secrets.'"  Leaders must, therefore, facilitate the free flow of information throughout the organization and be prepared to hear unpleasant truths from those within (and perhaps sometimes outside) the organization.

Despite the advantages of transparency, the authors also recognize that it carries a risk.  What appears to be transparency - dissemination of news via a blog, for example - may be pure manipulation if the blogger in question is writing with an agenda.  Moreover, when everyone has a platform, expertise and knowledge may become obscured by louder, less reliable voices.  Privacy may be compromised by today's culture of transparency, and without independent verification, apparent transparency may perpetuate inaccurate information.  

What's in it for lawyers?  Transparency is important in practice management and in the business of law, as managing partners and supervising lawyers must bear some responsibility for advising others about the firm's performance and individual performance.  

Although this year's large firm layoffs have been unpleasant, they have at least been honest: the large firm model as it existed is currently unsustainable in view of a variety of economic pressures, and reducing nonproductive lawyers and admitting the reason for it was a transparent response to the situation.  In contrast, firms that have conducted stealth layoffs, in which attorney performance is cited as the reason for a termination that is actually due to poor financial performance, have failed in transparency.  Whether the distinction makes a difference is something that observers and participants will discover in the coming months and years.

Perhaps even more importantly, lawyers must be transparent with their clients.  Transparency discusses the fall of Enron and Arthur Andersen and recognizes that leaders must encourage their advisors (lawyers and others) to speak candidly.  In the Enron/Arthur Andersen culture, advisors were not candid because the wrongdoer would likely fire service providers who questioned the propriety of its actions.  

The authors observe that professional service firm consultants (including lawyers) who lose a major client suffer "a fate worse than death: derailment from the partnership track," and that professional candor will not be encouraged unless and until professional service firms no longer offer an incentive that in effect encourages lying to or for clients.