Is there a downside to transparency reports?
Chris Lema thinks there are a few. Primarily, these:
- Things will go worse later if you decide to stop
- You might be hurting yourself if you decide to sell
- People may be motivated differently than you hoped
He makes good arguments in each case, but I can’t help but think how much I have enjoyed transparency when I’ve encountered it, especially as an employee. That said, Chris is talking about public transparency reports, not internal ones.
Joshua Strebel said in the comments how he guards these secrets publicly but is very transparent internally.
We are very private about KPI’s and Business Metrics publicly. Just our nature. Our team however has access to all high level financial data and we discuss it regularly. Internal transparency is much more important than external validation IMHO.
I think other than learning from people sharing information and my selfish desire to see how others are doing, I don’t have much to stand on with my public sharing argument (other than that I like it). But I absolutely agree with Strebel on the internal sharing; it’s pivotal.
Related, Chris shares an in-depth post on his first year at Crowd Favorite that I thoroughly enjoyed.
