Strategy #30: Open the books

Sometimes it takes courage to address employee concerns in an open and honest way. Especially when delivering bad news, it can be easier to waffle and obfuscate. But taking this easy road can cost you your best people. “The talent” wants to be as treated adults who can be trusted with sensitive information and who can handle bad news. “The talent” wants to feel like part of the inner circle, not someone who’s been stranded on the outermost loop.

When Jack Stack and his colleagues took over the Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation in a leveraged buyout, the company was deep in debt and deep in trouble. It was a rust belt business in a highly cyclical industry with a blue collar workforce substantially lacking in higher education. Yet Stack’s team engineered one of the most remarkable business turn-arounds in business history by openly sharing information with his people – all of his people, at all levels – and then by teaching them how to use that information.

This point is reiterated by Jim Harris and Joan Brannick in their book Finding and Keeping Great Employees as follows: “The fastest way to transform a top-performing staff into a group of disgruntled, discouraged, job-seeking workers is to shut them out of the loop of corporate information.”

The ultimate paradox is this – the manager who tries to keep secrets by not sharing information with employees does little more than assure that competitors know what’s going on within the company sooner than the company’s own people know what’s going on within the company. If you want to keep your best people, you’d best not be in the habit of trying to keep secrets.

“The more people know about a company, the better that company will perform. This is an iron-clad rule. You will always be more successful in business by sharing information with the people you work with than by keeping them in the dark… Don’t use information to intimidate, control, or manipulate people. Use it to teach people how to work together to achieve common goals and thereby gain control over their lives.” (emphasis in original)

Jack Stack: The Great Game of Business

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