What is the worst-case scenario with transparency? You’re being honest and are saying things that are real—the right outcome is eventually going to come out of that.
-Dave Balter, founder and CEO of BzzAgent
Tactical Transparency comes to a close
Shel Holtz and John Havens include plenty in their book. They combine a concrete definition for transparency with operational concerns, crisis management, and longterm sales strategies to create an inclusive guide on building – and preserving – company brands.
I appreciated its systemic focus on leadership understanding and implementing decisions to attain a transparent culture. And there’s so much more beyond the five chapters reviewed. Ah but there are more posts, conversations, and even books to unearth for small business! So this book review series comes to a close with a few more jewels of insight from Chapter 17.
Your Road Map to Transparency
Take action!…with an action plan that’s well featured in this chapter. From checklists to questionnaires, this section breaks down a road map to transparency in four parts: assess, adjust the culture, establish your voice, and create the action plan.
A micro take down
1. Assess: what tools are in place that can capture employee ideas? The goal here is to create a structure for substantive dialogue within an organization. And this question is one of many to gauge how near or far your company is to providing this type of environment.
2. Adjust The Culture: it takes time. It may be obvious but this premise proved a good reminder for me when making these transparent changes; bottom line it just takes time for the impact of transparent operations to trickle down throughout the company even for small businesses.
Again Dave Balter at BzzAgent makes a point:
“I think the thing people really need to know about this is that transparency is sort of a long-term cause. It is not “flip the switch tomorrow morning and everybody gets what the reality needs to be.”
3. Establish Your Voice: Holtz and Havens cite useful and varied views on traditionally objective journalism and subjectivity. Whatever your company adopts as its communications ‘voice’, it needs to be consistent.
4. Create An Action Plan – ego surfing and more: Monitoring one’s reputation can be a great opportunity to listen to those impacted or interested in your business. Whether it’s negative or positive feedback discovered in this process, it gives your business a chance to react with speed and ownership. More solutions abound in this section on communicating financial matters, crises, accessibility of leadership to strategic publics (and on…).
So hey, one question:
Of what’s been covered in these five chapters (review linked below), what appeals to you and your business about this book?
Previously from Tactical Transparency’s book review series
- -Ch. 3: Thoughts via audio cast & more launches the first review with Do You Have What It Takes?Characteristics of Transparent Organizations;
- -Ch. 4: Why opaque selling doesn’t deliver long-term return on investment.
- -Ch. 10: …on the benefits of issues blogs;
- -Ch. 16: There’s a fine discussion here too on overcoming objections from different entities and partners within your business on being transparent.
Photo Through A Glass, Darkly by Drumsnwhistles under Creative Commons License A-NC-ND Works 2.0.
Book jacket for Tactical Transparency used with permission from Meredith Stanton at John Wiley & Sons.
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