🔊As a company grows and processes get more complex it becomes much harder to share effectively, include everyone, and access all available information.
However, since most information flows digitally, we can follow a few guidelines to get as close as possible to the spirit of transparency which many companies claim but very few implement policies for it.
If you want to increase your transparency, read on.
đź“„ Online Documents
These may include Confluence pages, Google Docs, Jira tickets and others. Always default to transparency. Do not restrict access unless there is a solid reason to do it. We must not share:
- Confidential information such as personal data, employee development or third-party contracts.
- Secret strategic plans or critical business information that could harm our competitive edge if leaked to the public.
We must use it in our favour and not try to replace physical or phone interaction with it. Slack offers a complete outreach that isn’t possible otherwise, and it’s a waste if we limit it by our acquired social habits.
- Create channels as public. This one is probably the easiest, yet we still have too many. Please think twice before making them private. The majority of the time, there isn’t anything that can’t be shared.
- Add a description/topic to help participants understand the topic and their role within it.
Create a #name-team public channel. Use it as the main communication channel for the team and welcome everyone else to it. Remove and merge channels when possible.
- Participate in the public channels. Use them to share info and ask questions. Help centralise the conversation about a given topic.
- Acknowledge the information shared. Simple reactions go a long way:
received 👍 agree 👎disagree 🔔👀later.
- When people feel ignored, they will automatically be discouraged from continuing to share and ask questions.
- Acknowledge the information shared. Simple reactions go a long way:
- Avoid DMs â›” DMs, even when including multiple people, are exclusive and unnecessary. Unless you deal with a sensitive or personal matter, you should have that conversation in the public channels.
- Whenever you have the impulse to send a DM, please reconsider and mention people in the public channel instead.
- By prioritizing public chats over private ones we will have all the conversations and discussions accessible to everyone.
Imagine an office desk setup, where if person A talks to C about something, B and D can still overhear and intercede in the conversation if they have any valuable information
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One of the main powers of online communication is that you can reach a big audience with little effort. Our business is complex and knowledge is key to our success, so knowledge-sharing is critical for us. For our projects, knowledge is everything. Share info with as many people as possible using public channels. However, be mindful and intentional with the notifications you are triggering by mentioning the specific people or subgroups that are expected to act upon the information. Remember that only people who are specifically mentioned will be notified about further replies within threads. - DMs also overload some people who become the unofficial go-to person for certain topics. This creates bottlenecks and adds stress to these people. By sharing the question in a public channel instead, you may get a richer and faster response, and the knowledge will be shared. You will also be promoting participation.
- By prioritizing public chats over private ones we will have all the conversations and discussions accessible to everyone.
- Summarise and share. If you still decide to open a DM, summarise the content/outcome and share it in the related public channel so no one is excluded.
- Whenever you have the impulse to send a DM, please reconsider and mention people in the public channel instead.
Create and participate in #project and #collaboration channels. Use them for cross-team conversations and mention people when needed.
- It is not Spam. When you keep on topic in a given channel, you are not spamming; you contribute to providing a more complete picture.
- Link. Cross-reference, quote and link any external information to provide full context.
- Don’t be afraid of setting roles. Even if you don’t mind everyone reading, you may not want everyone to participate equally. If that’s the case, state it in the channel’s description and politely refer to it when needed.
- Politely redirect. Encourage others to be transparent and effective by asking them to:
- Stay on-topic when not aligned with the topic of the channel.
- Understand their role in the conversation.
- Move the conversation to a public channel when using unnecessary DMs.
- Move the conversation to a public channel when using unnecessary private channels.
- Take control over your notifications to have time for yourself and to help others.
- Walk out. Feel free to leave a channel when it isn’t relevant to you. You can always join back or read it without joining. If you are needed, someone will bring you back again.
- Private Channels. Unless you deal with sensitive, personal or confidential information, there isn’t a real reason to have private channels. Private channels facilitate gossip and silos. Sometimes, teams may benefit from having a “safe” space to talk privately and share internal jokes and other personal stuff. Use your judgement.
An alternative to a team private channel is to create a #name-team-internal public channel to discuss lower-level details of day-to-day tasks that may not be relevant to the wider audience. Welcome others to read.
Just like DMs, video calls are exclusive. Please summarise and share any takeaways in the related public channel(s) to keep everyone else in the know.
ss is simple: every 6-8 weeks every team/department in the office ranging from scrum teams to Finance or Client Services have a few days time frame to give feedback to each and every other team, in a public and transparent way, with this format:
Kaizentown 