Transparency

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
- Serenity Prayer

I never thought that I could feel so strongly about transparency in an organization. This just doesn’t seem like one of those deal-breaker type issues. But it can be if the organization straddles the fence.

I am a very transparent decision-maker. People will often hear me say things like, “It costs us nothing to get their buy-in,” and “Isn’t it worth it to get their input.” As a Project Manager I actually don’t make very many decisions at all. Instead, what I do is create an environment in which decisions can be made. Think about it, Project Managers are generally very process-oriented. The fact that there is a process at all usually means that more than one person is making the decision.

Other people though, make decisions in a vacuum. They are intentionally not inclusive in the decision-making process and because of this I will argue that their decisions are flawed and risky. Let me take a moment to explain. Decisions made by just one person are difficult to counter because other people don’t know what evidence was used to make the decision. Additionally, given the evidence, we don’t know how that evidence was prioritized and ranked. This causes other people to clam up and not challenge the decision. I know that if you make a decision based on flawed data I can tell you that your data was flawed and that will lead to an opportunity to reconsider the decision. But if I don’t know your data then I cannot make that challenge.

Further, people who make decisions in this manner, unless they are really really informed, never even get access to the complete data. It is virtually impossible to see all of the sides of an important decision. Different people have different responsibilities and also different frames of reference. A solitary decision-maker loses the opportunity to collect this information. He or she will make a decision based on the available information, and I will grant that he or she will make the best decision possible. But with the lack of data making a good decision is more dependent on luck.

Lastly, when I make a decision in my inclusive manner I get to share responsibility with everyone else who participated in the process. That decision is partly mine, but also partly owned by everyone else. If it turns out to be a good decision then we all get to share in the rewards of making a good decision. If it turns out to be a bad decision then we all own a part of that bad decision. I try to include people who are affected or impacted by a particular decision. They are my stakeholders. As such when the decision turns out to have been a bad one, I have found that they don’t complain, even people who were on the other side. However when a sole decision-maker makes a bad decision, I am one of the mob ready to criticize. This is because in the latter case, solitary decision-makers accept complete responsibility for their decisions. When they are right they win big and when they are wrong they lose big.

I never really paid much credence to the Theory X and Theory Y stuff from McGregor. I know it is in the PMBOK and I really thought it was there to establish a more academic foundation for the book. Let’s face it, most of the book is experiential, you have to practice it. But some things are academic and Theory X and Y is one of them. Theory X basically states that employees are lazy robots who only follow explicit instructions. As such managers have to be very strict and authoritarian with the employees. Theory Y is the opposite. It states that employees generally want to work hard and better themselves. As such, Theory Y managers should nurture employees and help to develop them. The interesting connection for me is that I think Theory X people are more likely to be solitary decision-makers and Theory Y are likely to be more transparent decision-makers.

If these types of (closed) decisions are made frequently enough for a wide enough segment of the office they will change the culture. It is very disappointing when the actions of one or two people can change the culture of an organization. But that is what will happen if, as an organization, you don't collectively work at being transparent in how decisions are made.