I was once told that the most important question one can ask themselves is: Who benefits? Critical thinking starts here. So does systemic innovation. Ditto systemic renovation. Cui bono, as they say.
Examining points-of-view, conclusions, opinions, belief structures, habits, etc. begins in the answers. Does it benefit the few? The many? Who does it leave out and what’s left on the table if we don’t change a thing?
Silence and stigma are a fascinating proving ground for this line of questioning.
Let’s take salaries for instance. Many of us are taught, explicitly or implicitly, that salaries are better left secret. Stigma abounds in the ‘how much do you make’ conversation and there are a great many of us who avoid the topic harder than we work to earn the salary itself. So, who gains from salary confidentiality?
People who are paid more than they’re worth is a fun answer to consider. You’ll often find them somewhere in the corporate titles that mean almost nothing in the linguistic sense (Chief Executive Officer, anyone?). I have yet to meet the CEO that works $10m per year harder than the coordinator making $60k. These are the people who receive bonuses when others are laid off, despite the fact that their poor leadership led to the situation in which lay-offs were necessary to balance the books.
We should also add those who are on the better side of the wage gap. They benefit too. So long as those suffering on the underside of it don’t know they’re suffering, alls well it seems.
What about when we sweep executive misdeeds under the rugs of NDA secrecy? In this case, it’s bad business itself who wins. Benefits accrue to the clanky processes and structures that injure and disempower people. Don’t ask, don’t tell, and the business doesn’t get fixed. The bad ideas, broken cultures, awful hiring practices, harmful behaviours, etc. all get to continue on in the darkness.
This kind of secrecy empowers precisely no one and benefits only a few mediocre folks. It allows an organization to short its people, taking advantage of them wherever they can no matter what role they occupy. It allows inequities to go on, and a flawed status quo to giggle its way to the bank.
Because that’s the trouble with darkness. In there, no one sees well enough to fix anything; and consequence can’t identify deserving targets.
False safety
In our working cultures we’ve allowed so many policies and problems to grow in the dark. They dictate how we pay and value people, how we organize and fire, when we speak openly, and when we mutter in half-truths. It’s the birthplace of the common dissonance that occurs when corporate action flouts corporate values.
With their iniquities and worst behaviours tucked away in the secret shadows, organizations think they’ve eluded the bullet. That they’re safe. But they’re wrong. Or more accurately, they will be. See, there’s a time horizon on the question of benefits.
Because eventually, good or bad, status quos change. Jettisoning accountability for the moment puts an organization in the very weakest of positions — not today, but one day. The best, gentlest outcome is that the business gets left behind in its own confusion of outmoded habits and the compiling deformities of all those hidden mistakes.
The more likely outcome is far less forgiving: the broken system breaks, the truth comes out, and cause and effect do what they do best. That kind of damage can be terminal.
The Case for Daylight
What about trying transparency for a change?
In our mistakes, our flaws, our good, and yes, even in our salaries. Throw the curtains open, let daylight do what it does best: show us where the grime has built up, and remove any hiding places for injustice. It gives us data. Real data. Unedited by bias or ass-covering. It gives us opportunities to build something better, stronger. Something that benefits everyone.
And, if the bottom line is the primary concern, I promise you that daylight is the move you want to make. Daylight creates trust, buy-in. Via precedent, via putting effort behind the values. It starts the machinery of all the good things that make a cultural gestalt.
I know firsthand that when we embrace daylight, at first, it sucks what you see. But at least you see it. You know what to fix.
And when everyone can see everything, who benefits?
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My genuine gratitude for reading. Please engage with the work, discuss and offer your thoughts. They are most welcome. You can also find me at migueleichelberger.com
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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