Jan 23, 2021
THE CURIOUS CASE OF INVISIBLE TRANSPARENCY — Part I
Approaching the mystery of transparency from the unseen labyrinth of beliefs and values
When he was a toddler, my elder son used to often go and bang himself on glass doors and walls in the malls. Those transparent objects really messed up with his cognitive abilities. And every such incident used to end up with me buying him his favourite ice-cream. I am not very sure if it was his trick or the poor soul was truly troubled by the inconspicuous physical property called Transparency. He is now 12 years old and doesn’t bang his head on glass walls anymore. But in professional circles, I often come across people who are struggling with transparency in their conduct and banging their heads every now and then.
In the physical world, we all know what transparency means. A purely transparent object allows us to see things through it without distorting the real picture. At the same time, the world can also see us ‘as we are’ through that same transparent object. Reminds me of those glass lifts in posh shopping malls. So one can say that transparency is, in its purest sense, a passive property which does not interfere with the way things are. So if there is transparency, it should not even come to notice. However, sometimes the transparent object adds its own colour, magnification, distortion to the scene taking it further away from the truth and making it less trustworthy.
Things become quite interesting when transparency is introduced as an essential (though abstract) value in work culture.
Firstly, transparency does not remain a passive property but becomes an active catalyst for the whole human process at work place — Transparency creates a deep impact on everything that happens.
Secondly, it can not be taken for granted like a passive property. It can not be left to be a variable perception but must be made a measurable constant — One needs to work at transparency, for transparency and, with transparency.
Thirdly, it demands an internal and integral shift in the way we think, feel, and do things —Transparency begins with ‘I’ (Pardon my English!).
Today, an ever increasing number of organizations are embracing Agile or Scrum framework — not just for product development but also as the backbone of their organizational conduct and culture. The inherent flexibility of approaching product development using Agile or Scrum philosophy is catching attention of industries other than software development. All the different versions of agile/scrum are essential in their respective contexts and inevitable in today’s extremely VUCA world. Scrum proposes five values which serve as the very foundation of scrum framework — commitment, courage, focus, openness and respect. On the foundation of these values stand the three pillars of scrum — Transparency, Inspection and Adaptation — which enable developing a useful, releasable, maximum viable product at regular intervals.
In my humble opinion, each of the five values and each of the three pillars is subject for numerous volumes of research and theory. But the most important aspect of practical implementation of transparency, inspection and adaptation is largely left for the person on the ground to decide for himself. While this flexibility is a much welcome summer breeze in the traditional jungle of prescriptive, hard-wired techniques and the Western paranoia about structures and methods, it can also lead to problems if the true essence of these values and pillars is perceived wrongly. A large number of organizations suffer from such distorted implementation of scrum theory.
Amongst the three pillars which hold the Scrum framework — transparency, inspection, and adaptation — transparency has always amused me the most as it remains largely opaque (pun intended!). Is transparency just another fancy jargon? Just a workplace gimmick? Just a way of conduct? Just a parameter for designing offices without walls? Just a manner of dealing with people? Is transparency an attitude? Or is it all of this and much more? Or is it none of this?
For last 21 years, I have been serving in an organization where hierarchy takes precedence over almost everything else, where there is an immense emphasis on prescriptive procedures, where information is supposed to be shared only on a need to know basis, where hoarding information is often perceived as a tool for gaining supremacy over others, where risk and loss of resources are preferred over transparency. All these years I have always been searching for a better way and that search has led me to dive deeper and deeper in the complex interwoven network of needs, beliefs, values, attitudes, conducts and, behaviours.
I believe that, more often than not, transparency is left to be perceived rather than understood. As a leader, one may perceive that he/she is transparent. Much is left unsaid and left for others to perceive from their end. The challenge comes when perceptions of two sides don’t match. A leader considers himself as most transparent because he has shared all the data, explained all the requirements, cleared all the doubts and issued all the instructions. But on the other end of the spectrum, the team members feel that there are many gaps in the story, some crucial details are still hazy, enough has not been said about a particular feature of the product, and so on.
The leader feels that the team is just not ready as yet to take the plunge and the team feels that the bottom of the pit is not yet visible. You know where this usually ends up — a poorly designed, delayed product with a client that is lost forever.
I will not tell you how to be transparent — what one must do and must avoid. Nor will I waste time on explaining the importance of transparency in our life — be it personal, professional, familial or social. So if you joined me with those expectations — I am sorry for wasting your time.
What I intend to do instead is to approach this mysterious case of transparency from the unseen labyrinth of deeper beliefs and values. Rather than treating transparency like a shape-shifting alien which changes its appearance with a slight change in context, I invite you to dig deep and find the roots of this mysterious concept from the inner core of your belief and value system. Let’s give a shot at developing a universal way of dealing with this elusive concept.
I strongly believe that transparency is much deeper and broader than what it superficially appears to be. To be able to understand transparency better, the cluster of positive as well as negative beliefs linked with transparency must be identified. These ‘Belief Clusters' are externally and functionally visible in our attitude while they are internally and cognitively linked with our value system. And in that sense, transparency can be treated as one of the values. The need for transparency must support a person’s idea of ‘self’. It must co-exist with a person’s other stated and un-stated ‘needs’ so that a deeper and stronger need does not overshadow the need to be transparent. At the same time, it must be understood clearly as to when transparency becomes an important value and when it does not — when it becomes important for a person’s existence and when it does not. By doing so, one can identify the environmental factors that promote or hinder transparency. The feelings associated with transparency must also be accessed so that one can determine what provides the impetus and what causes impediment in implementing transparency. To understand the link between beliefs and values, check out my previous article ‘Beliefs and Values : The Compass of Our Ships’.
To summarise, Transparency must be treated as an important value in our professional life if we really intend to implement a truly agile environment in our organizations. In second part, we shall see a holistic approach to understand how we implement transparency and what can we do to improve it.
