• Agile Coach

Scrum Academy: Transparency is a verb

Agile Transparency is also about what you don’t know

I once thought that transparency meant the same thing as openness. That, as an organization, you had to share your figures and plans with everyone. I didn’t see the benefit and dismissed transparency as a fad.

When I later delved into Agile, I discovered that you can actually use transparency very purposefully. Why are Inspect & Adapt and Transparency such a powerful combination? It’s like this: without transparency, there is little concrete to Inspect and thus Adapt.

I discovered that transparency is not only about what you know, but also about how insecure you are about something. The latter is also what makes transparency difficult. We live in a corporate culture where you are supposed to know things. Those who know things and those who can explain them well make careers.

Only: we live in a complex world. Almost nothing is completely certain. And certainly not if you want to innovate. Yet transparency is crucial for your team to operate effectively in a complex environment. In a multidisciplinary team, the uncertainty of one of the experts can bring golden information about potential risks.

One of the first things I discovered about transparency was how liberating it is to say, “I don’t know.” Or, “I’m not sure.” And then to ask, “How do we find out?” Give it a try: you’ll find that you’re going to have much more inspiring conversations. By saying, “I don’t know,” you will find out exponentially much more. This is the first reason why transparency is a verb. It means actively collecting data and avoiding assumptions.

Transparency is visual

The second misconception I had was that transparency was only about facts or numbers. I knew that our brain is notoriously bad at processing large amounts of data. So then how transparent are all those facts and figures?

Fortunately, all humans have a special tool for processing lots of data: our fast intuitive brain. That part of the brain effortlessly processes lots of data, as long as it is visual. It makes connections almost automatically, sees patterns at lightning speed and filters information out of noise.

So transparency, I discovered, also means making your data visual so people can process it better. That’s why we love Lean Canvases, Kanban Boards, Scrum Boards, Burn down charts, Magic Estimations and more.

This is also why digital tools always work less well than just a big overview on the wall. It’s just less visual and therefore less transparent. So transparency is also a verb because making data visual requires some effort.

Transparency needs security

So transparency is not so crazy. I was finally getting a taste for it. Until I read the book “The Circle” by Dave Eggers. Then I had to swallow. In this chillingly realistic novel, the author sketches a near future in which transparency is used as the ultimate means of power. The main character is forced to “go transparent. A camera around her neck records everything she does. Nothing is forgotten anymore. She loses all her privacy. She also loses all creativity and learning ability because every mistake she makes is mercilessly punished by millions of viewers.

I was deeply troubled. Transparency was good, wasn’t it? Forgetting was annoying, wasn’t it? In its ultimate form, would it really always lead to fear and tyranny?

I remained disappointed and a bit cynical one evening I heard 4 entrepreneurs speak. To my surprise, they shared their biggest slips and all received thunderous applause for it! I discovered a culture where failure was celebrated. The event was called Fuck Up Nights and it was literally FUN. Why was it just possible, the uninhibited sharing of mistakes? It works because there was an environment of safety and understanding. Everyone in the room accepted that making mistakes is human. Everyone knows you have to make mistakes to learn. This is the Transparency I love! The kind of transparency that is warm and leads to growth! At F.U.N., I discovered that safety and transparency go hand in hand.

In entrepreneurial Silicon Valley, the adage is “Fail Fast.” Only when you have a few failed ventures on your resume are you taken seriously as an entrepreneur there. At the larger companies, fail fast means celebrating with your colleagues how much money you saved by discovering early that something doesn’t work.

So transparency is a verb because security does not come naturally. It’s something you have to actively work on. The Fuck Up Nights have a manifesto for that.

Transparency is hard work

So you can’t just write transparency into your core values. You can’t demand it from people. Transparency is something you do together. You will have to lead by example: avoid absolutisms, state the degree of certainty, make your conclusions as visual as possible, and actively counter cynicism and sarcasm. Transparency is hard work. But it pays off in psychological security and fantastic team performance.