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Lesson Five: Without Action, Transparency is Just Another Form of Egocentrism.
This blog is the fifth in a series of the Top 10 Things I've Learned About Transparency. You can view the previous lessons below.
With all the recent moves of the new Obama administration, transparency has been front and center this past week. With all the positive press lauding the practice of transparency, I think it's important to remind ourselves that transparency is a means, not an end. Rather than a goal in itself, transparency is a leadership and collaboration tool. It's a way of doing business that I believe can help companies and organizations to communicate and achieve their desired goals. But talking, no matter how openly, is worthless without action.
It should be painfully obvious: walk the walk before you talk the talk. But these days, with the countless ways to broadcast ourselves, it is perfectly possible for social entrepreneurs to spend all their time marketing themselves online (whether or not people are actually listening). As such, it must be said that taking action to maximize the effectiveness of that organization, product or service MUST come before talking about it.
Especially in the early stages of an organization or venture, you need to be spending the vast majority of your time actually doing what you are working on rather than talking about it. As an organization evolves and has more substance to report on, public communication becomes more and more important because it has an actual impact. By that time, you may have built a management structure and have more of your time freed up for public relations. But when I see someone who purports to be starting a nonprofit venture spending their entire day blogging, digging, and tweeting, I'm gonna get suspicious about your motivations. Organizations are built through action. If you aren't spending 90% of your time implementing, you shouldn't have that much to talk about.
So as the hype factor around transparency grows, we all need to remind ourselves that transparency is a complement to our actions, but never a priority over it.
- Kjerstin Erickson
www.FORGEnow.org
