How transparent should leaders be with their own organizations?

Miki Kuusi · published 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

25:14 20VC: Wolt CEO, Miki Kuusi on Leadership Lessons Scaling to a Reported $8.1BN Exit to Doordash, Building Teams not Families, The Difference Between Trust and Safety Within Companies, How To Use Compensation to Create Culture & Why You Should Not Be Lookin

Emad Mostaque · published 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

62:16 20VC: Why the AI Bubble Will Be Bigger Than The Dot Com Bubble, Why AI Will Have a Bigger Impact Than COVID, Why No Models Used Today Will Be Used in a Year, Why All Models are Biased and How AI Kills Traditional Media with Emad Mostaque, Founder & CEO @

Arthur Mensch · published 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

43:41 20VC: Mistral's Arthur Mensch: Are Foundation Models Commoditising | How Do We Solve the Problem of Compute | Is There Value in the Application Layer | Open vs Closed: Who Wins and Mistral's Position

Gokul Rajaram · published Jul 25, 2018

A daily or weekly metrics email to the entire team breeds urgency and reinforces transparency.

Square has done this since its early days and it has proved very powerful; new products are expected to set one up.

source The CEO’s most important operational responsibility

Gokul Rajaram · published Aug 2, 2018

Weekly is the best cadence for the CEO email, fortnightly is acceptable, and anything less frequent than that won't be impactful.

More frequency gives more chances to reinforce messages, and weekly captures both transient and semi-permanent things in a fast-moving company; twelve emails a year isn't enough.

Scope: author's personal preference

source The weekly CEO e-mail

Gokul Rajaram · published Jul 25, 2018

A regular CEO email to the whole team beats other forms of many-to-one communication in authenticity and permanence, producing a better informed and more aligned team.

It gives the CEO a personal, direct line of communication with the entire company.

Scope: weekly or fortnightly

source The CEO’s most important operational responsibility

Gokul Rajaram · published Aug 2, 2018

A well-done CEO email functions like a virtual 1:1 with every person in the organization, letting the CEO speak directly and authentically in their own voice.

Employees want to know what the CEO is thinking, but only the few who do regular 1:1s get the CEO's true priorities in their own voice.

source The weekly CEO e-mail

Stephane Kurgan · published 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 · published 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

Keith Rabois · published Nov 27, 2023

The mainstream advice that companies should be transparent is wrong as a universal rule

Apple, the most valuable tech company on the planet, is completely nontransparent — separate badges, restricted buildings, employees not knowing what others work on

43:00 Mainstream transparency advice is not universal since highly successful companies like apple are nontransparent

Sam Corcos · published 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 · published 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

Gokul Rajaram · published Aug 2, 2018

CEOs should pre-declare a small set of off-limits topics (e.g. M&A, specific people exits) and then discuss everything else transparently with the whole team.

Once boundaries are defined and honored, everything else can be on the table; you have to trust your team.

source Pre declare a few off limits topics then be fully transparent otherwise

Gokul Rajaram · published Aug 2, 2018

The email should report unvarnished progress against goals and initiatives using a Red/Yellow/Green grade per item, and anything that can't be graded should be rephrased.

Grading forces clarity; an ungradeable item is badly phrased.

source Red yellow green grading of goal progress forces honest reporting