How transparent should leaders be with their own organizations?

Miki Kuusi · Nov 28, 2022

CEOs should operate with full transparency toward co-founders, management and board rather than shielding the team from what worries them

Protecting the team makes you a single point of failure and burns you out, prevents the team from working with full information, and the team produces smarter solutions than you would alone

Scope: transparency directed at co-founders, management and the board

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Emad Mostaque · May 17, 2023

People are the most important thing in a scaling organisation and everyone must be on the same page; closing up and building silos was a mistake that caused internal pain

Stability built silos it is now having to break down and is moving toward being more open

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Arthur Mensch · Apr 29, 2024

Transparent feedback and operating in an almost fully transparent manner is very useful and has let Mistral grow without breaking

He had untested management premises and found in practice that near-full transparency supported growth without the organization breaking

Scope: based on Mistral's own experience

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Stephane Kurgan · Jul 28, 2023

Giving every employee access to the company data warehouse is worth the cost of making the entire company insiders and restricting their trading to open windows

It signals you trust employees as adults to be responsible with data, which drives engagement; the alternative is prioritizing employees' ability to trade any day of the week

14:40 Full data warehouse access for employees is worth the cost of restricting trading windows

Stephane Kurgan · Jul 28, 2023

Radical transparency is incredibly powerful — a public compensation grid removes negotiation entirely, and near-total information sharing produces extremely high trust, engagement and shipping efficiency

Employees who know nearly everything trust the company more, which makes it efficient; and transparent comp grids leave no room for drawn-out, tense negotiation

20:47 Public comp grids and near total information sharing produce trust and shipping efficiency

Sam Corcos · Dec 11, 2023

Radical transparency is viable in companies in a way it isn't in countries because you can select and remove the people who behave politically

Full transparency collapses if everyone is political and distrustful, but unlike a country a company chooses its members — if a performance review reveals politicking you can fire that person

21:13 Transparency works in companies not countries since companies can select and remove political members

Andy Rachleff · Mar 10, 2017

Transparency must be paired with context, otherwise people invent their own context and usually assume bad faith or the worst outcome

If you let someone else set the agenda, transparency works against you

17:15 Transparency only works when paired with context