There’s Risk in Being Transparent

Last week Ryan Carson of Carsonified had to make a difficult decision to let go of some of his people. Being an owner of a small business, I don’t envy him that. Not at all. He then went on to write up a post offering advice on recession-proofing was, somewhat inexplicably, tied to the layoffs. This post, not surprisingly (to me anyway), brought on all sorts of negative feedback.

In an effort to be positive and transparent (and I realize many thought this more a stunt than an attempt at true honesty, but I’m assuming Ryan’s intentions were for the good) he accidentally stirred up quite a bit of negativity that drew attention away from the advice he was trying to give. For the record, I’m not agreeing (or disagreeing) with his advice, I want to focus on the manner with which it was presented.

The lesson here? You need to be careful when trying to be transparent; not everything should be shared.

Opening the kimono has many risks

There has been much talk about the value of transparency and openness in modern business, especially among those businesses who are mostly run online. I, for the most part, am a believer in being straightforward, honest and open. However, I also know you have to be very, very careful. Too many times in the past I’ve been burnt by something I said when it wasn’t well thought-through. Now I often sit on posts, or e-mails and even tweets before shooting them off and I still manage to come up with cringeworthy moments almost weekly where I ask myself, “why the hell did I do that?”

Sometimes we can be our own worst enemy and the best intentions don’t always play out for the good. Thus is the case here with Ryan. I think he probably shared a bit too much without really thinking it all the way through. When I read it yesterday it didn’t take me long to wonder when the backlash, deserved or not, was going to hit. To his credit he’s done the best thing he can by addressing it in the same manner through which he made the original post – directly and openly. You can wonder about his motives, but at least he’s sticking by it. Something I feel you need to be able to do if you’re going to go with an open and transparent way of running your business. Which, also to his credit, is something Ryan’s been doing for quite awhile now.

As a business owner, I feel for him and I hope this doesn’t become too much of a distraction for him and his team. Running a business is hard enough without having everyone and their mom’s question you in detail about the decisions you’re making.

The Bottom Line

Transparency is hard, even in the best of times. It’s a slippery slope that can just as often be distracting and damaging as it is rewarding. As such, it needs to be handled delicately. It’s all too easy, in our age of “everything at your fingertips” to fire off an e-mail, a tweet or a blog post without having fully thought through the consequences.

If you’re are business owner that’s embracing transparency, just realize it still takes some solid thought and you need to be willing to react to any negativity in a transparent manner as well.