A lot of organizations and movements are built around a hierarchy that obscures access to information. At each level, a supporter receives expanded access to the vision, strategy and tactics. Compartmentalization is promoted as a way to keep people focused on assigned tasks. Executives wonder why an intern should be given "inside information" about strategy and managers who spent a few dozen years getting to their current position find it disconcerting to explain their work to younger colleagues.
That philosophy flies in the face of the openness nurtured by the internet. Here at NationBuilder, we have weekly staff meetings to make sure everyone is on the same page. It's quite refreshing how frank our founder Jim Gilliam is, especially around information that cannot be shared publicly. It sets a standard of respect, accountability, and shared vision that permeates everything we do.
Glenn Lopis expands on the idea of transparency helping to create a shared vision in 5 Powerful Things Happen When A Leader Is Transparent on the Forbes website. While his examples are from for-profit companies, his points are equally important for nonprofit and public sector organizations. He summarizes his article with a simple formula:
Efficient problem solving + the ability to build teams easier + the development of authentic relationships + trust = higher levels of performance.
The need for transparency is often incorporated into articles about engaging millenials in the workplace. This idea is convincingly refuted by Melinda K. Lewis in her article "Generations, transparency, and social approaches...organizational cultural change is coming." She points out that the desire for transparency can be observed across all fields from nonprofit employees to college students and isn't limited to a single generation.
Creating a culture of transparency starts with your organization's infrastructure, particularly your approach to people's information. It is also a corner stone of effective community organizing. Transparency is built into your nation's control panel: it starts with the way permission levels are handled. By default, your nation will have a functional security model. All point people can view the entire people database, update contact information, and log contacts. Since people are the heart of an organizing process, this gives everyone equal access to the most important aspect of your nation. Similarly, when you use NationBuilder Mailboxes, a record of your email correspondence is saved on a person's record, which allows for relationship continuity when a point person leaves or a supporter is assigned to a new point person. And with the various views available from the Dashboard, you can compare your own organizing efforts with others in your campaign.
We recognize everyone is not ready to give up this much control of information, so we also offer a data security model, which limits which people interns and leaders can see. There are other differences between the two models, but it comes down to how much transparency you'd like to have in your nation.
Is transparency a core value of your organization? How has the transparency built into our community organizing software impacted your workflow? Let us know in the comments section!