“There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.”- Joseph PulitzerThat is the conclusion I drew after reading Anthony Williams and Don Tapscott’s book Radical Openness: Four Unexpected Principles for Success. Openness means freedom, flexibility, sharing and candor. But in a world where information is not distributed evenly, openness is not always welcomed – esecially by those who have had something to hide. Organizations, governments and individuals have thrived by being insular and hiding behind rules. That world is crumbling down and giving way to greater transparency.Truth, like pregnancy, cannot be hidden for long. Organizations have to learn that they cannot control the messaging anymore. There are far too many sources that can point out the unplesant truth. If only organizations knew how much of their confidential data is available on the Net, they would be shocked. Smartphones that make it easy for people to snap pictures and post it on their social media networks has made whistle blowing much easier. While whistleblowers have always existed, they have never had the power of the Internet to broadcast their evidence.Remember the red faces of the diplomats after Wikileaks released what was till then classified information. Imagine having a similar site that releases what happens behind closed doors in the office. Actually, that is already happening. Everything from salaries, financial information, working conditions and even feedback about bosses is available (yes, your truth could be out there and you don’t even know).Even HR decisions are now posted on social media. Take the case of HMV company’s decision to sack some employees going viral on Twitter.
Poppy Rose Cleere, employee of HMV, seized control of the Twitter account @hmvtweets to protest against sixty employees being fired. The tweets were like this:
“We’re tweeting live from inside HR where we’re all being fired! Exciting!!”.
A minute later came the update: “There are over 60 of us being fired at once! Mass execution of loyal employees who love the brand,” followed by: “Just overheard our marketing director (he’s staying folks) ask ‘How do I shut down twitter?’.”
Imagine that the company fires an employee and the person is giving a blow by blow account as the firing happens. that is openness for you. For the first time, we are living in a world where the voice of the employee is as powerful as the voice of the corporation.There are companies that are making it easy to compile such data. Corpwatch.org, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, whose motto says, “holding corporations accountable”. They’ve created research tools that lets amateur corporate investigators to operate out of the comfort of their own living rooms. Crocodyl.org even has a special section for whistleblowers. It has detailed profiles on hundreds of companies that are kept up-to-date by volunteers around the world. Tapscott says in his talk at TED that a demographic kick from a new generation combined with a demand pull from a new economic global environment is causing the world to open up.That we live in a world where transparency is going to be the norm is not new thinking. How do we leverage it to our advantage? We need to think about research and intellectual property in a different manner. Could research be done by people outside of the organization? Companies like Apple and Google have thrown open their platform to developers and the result is the App Store where literally millions of applications have been developed to address all kinds of human needs. Microsoft’s Kinect is being used by people for applications the company had not imagined. If we have to live in this radically open world, we might as well adapt our ways of working to turn it to our advantage. As Tapscott says if we all have to disrobe, we might as well become more fit.