Transparency.Internal Transparency - Whether its sharing monthly revenue data or sharing company's short term and long term goals with every member. I think internal communication at vinsol is good. Everybody tries to understand the company’s goals, the role they play in the company’s performance, and how they can adapt what they do to contribute more to their career and vinsol success in future. I think internally, we have been trying to be a very transparent organization.External Transparency - its a widely debated topic. On any given day , I dont want Vinsol to be a black box doing some good work and the stakeholders/fans/clients don't know the culture, process , people who are behind that. We need to do a lot of work in this area. From tactical transparency , a must read book by shel holtz ,
Transparency is the degree to which an organization shares the following with its stakeholder publics:
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Its leaders
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Its employees: Employees of transparent companies are accessible to reinforce the public view of the company and to help people where appropriate. Solving a newbie on forum or taking ownership of a small issue in the framework, other project or something else.
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Its values: What do we value more ? community, developers , process, agility, freedom, happiness, honesty.
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Its culture: How a company does things is more important today than what it does. The way things get done is not a secret in transparent companies. Agile process, pair programming
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The results of its business practices, both good and bad : Successes, failures, problems, and victories all are communicated by transparent companies.
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Its business strategy: Of particular importance to the investment community but also of interest to several other audiences, a company’s strategy is a key basis for investment decisions.
Examples :
Dell is an inspiration for me. Dell talked openly about problems and engaged customers in conversation about how to fix them. Whether its
Direct2Dell project or
http://www.ideastorm.com/. I am not sure whether giving example of a consumer electronics company is right thing but if an organization of size of Dell can do it , why not us ?
Hashrocket has distinguished itself from other rails companies by becoming more transparent in more than one way :
Obie's talk
http://casperfabricius.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/talk-obie.txt (rails , blood and sweat) talks about how hashrocket works from pure business perspective -marketing/sales/pricing etc. Their video channel brings the "inside view" of the company (
http://www.vimeo.com/hashrocket).
Using video and interactive media for business echoes that desire and provides a powerful tool to enhance a connection with people and community around.
Sun Microsystems’ Schwartz summarizes it beautifully
“Nobody expects us to be perfect. They do increasingly expect us to be genuine. Developers and customers want to do business with companies that are transparent. They know what’s next for a product, how we are going to manage our relationship with them, how we are going to treat them."
