Am here at iNNOVATIONS conference and reflecting on Don Robertson's session on the imis community site. He made mention of the concept of transparency and I was wondering how people think of transparency as a practice, but almost more importantly (in my mind), how does transparency become inculcated into your worldview so that you are operating from a transparent frame of mind. With Sarbanes-Oxley one of the hottest and most contentious topics in for-profit companies due to strict new financial reporting requirements and non-profits all worrying if SOX is going to be expanded to effect them and if so, how, transparency is becoming a very common term. I wonder the degree of flippancy associated with the term as it is bandied about. Is there a true understanding of what it means, or is it just the new buzz term to drop into convo so that you can eat at the cool kids' table?

What I heard from Don is this: HE GETS IT. He said that he did research, he thought about it, he found some mechanism to start to analyze and put his thoughts into action, then he reflected some more, and then he came to believe that this is the new method/way of thinking to adopt in order to evolve (goodness, did i say evolve again? maybe this should be the Evolutions blog), and now he is a believer, which then leads him to the next step of change: communicating to others and dissemination of the idea. We just described change management at its most basic and I am wondering how many people picked up on the actual words that Don used and what they mean in relation to transparency. He said "ASI is committed....." and then listed out various items. Then he repeated "committed". Not twice, but five times he said the word committed and he said it with his hands open and with conviction and wide eyed. For those public speaking home gamers, you know that those postures and expressions equate to honesty and genuine belief. All good stuff that I want to hear/see and let's face facts...I want to believe in my CTO, my company, and purpose.

But where am I going with this?

Transparency. Right. The thing about transparency is that it is more than a practice--it doesn't mean showcasing your information or just the lack of providing/exhibiting information. Transparency is a philosophy--it is a way of behavior that affects all of your actions, thoughts, experiences, and responses. What I liked hearing in Don's address was that this is the new mode of behavior and that this idea of openness, collaboration, aggregation, cross-functionality is the way of behavior within ASI that he believes (and he made point to note that he and Bob both think this)is how we should work and think because the greater world has already or in process of adopting this new framework.

Transparency is a philosophy that I hold close in my heart and is one of the core components of my business, and personal, code of ethics. While the benefits of it were cemented into me during my post-Enron business school days, the seeds of it actually started way before with my love of acquiring and then connecting like information with like people. While I personally suck at networking, I am very good at networking on behalf of others. Why is this? Hmm...probably because I am adept at picking up on all the nuances and subtleties that people display and know how to "thin-slice" as Malcolm Gladwell would put it. So, I probably know within 2 minutes of meeting you if you are in the Transparency Club or not.

But again I digress....

Where I was going with this is that transparency as a value that is then imbued within a corporate culture/worldview seems to work well in business settings. I was going to say when I started my history that I didn't know I was such a transparency advocate until I came across it at Tulane (school #4) and had the opportunity to work on the first project ever that focused on transparency in non-governmental organizations. While I was in the field of public health, the NGOs that we examined and the organizations that we sought to examine/influence in their oversight of NGOs broke down into 2 camps--the ones that believed in and upheld the ethical aspects of transparency were actually achieving their end goals, had strong donor bases, strong peripheral support, and were able to effect change. The other group were the NGOs that could never get enough support, needed new equipment, had demoralized staff with high turnover, couldn't keep the cold chain from being broken and constantly had to ditch thousands of vials of vaccines because the support system was not in place. It was really fascinating. It seemed like the successful NGOs really believed in the idea of doing good and this kept them honest and on target. These people collaborated, they shared openly, and this, in turn, served as a cross-checking or self-regulating force that positively reinforced the results--and the cycle kept repeating.

You can instantly see it when you walk into an organization to implement something--in my case, mostly websites, and you watch the dynamics of the group. You can almost visibily identify the person that is not in the Transparency Club and you know a-ha! there is the person that is going to try and stop this process from happening. If you see the factions--and they will develop more quickly in a non-transparent organization (being the self-serving animals that we humans inherently are), you know that you have just hit the driver called fear. The only thing that stops transparency is fear. The "what" that drives fear is always different, but that seems to always be the root cause.

The question that I had for Don that I didn't hear is just that: How do you overcome the fear? How we deal with this question is as much an interpersonal issue as a community issue. I am absolutely fascinated now with the idea of fear in a software company that is undergoing a cultural revolution. Who was written on this? We all know it is historically an issue in the humorous world of software companies as the stereotypes of the dev people suspiciously eyeing the "them" of the sales people and vice-versa and on and on. But evidently, Don has orchestrated this entire change in TX--I can see it, i can hear it in my colleagues. So what's the secret Don? How do we effect change like that and continue it through the community?