The Inedible Cassette...

 

When I was a kid, it was about windows and floor wax.  Now, it’s strictly about business.

Transparency.

In the last fifteen years at least, the word has become the most indispensible ornament to any workplace populated by humans, office furniture, fluorescent lights and Keurig machines.

Transparency, by one definition, means that you can see right through it.

In nearly any corporate environment, the very imperative mandate for transparency accomplishes just that.  You can’t avoid the tendency to see right through it.  

What’s the imperative mandate about, anyway…?  Just what went on before transparency became the mantra prayer among the devout compound..?

It was probably the inescapable revolution of litigations, claims and accusations within the confines of so many of those white-collar, khaki-trousered, office-supplied high-rise settings in the last few decades that have had C.E.O.s at their Howard Beale wits’ end.  They’re mad as hell, both angry and sanity-wise, they’re not gonna take it anymore, and they’ll fix it with the ultimate lock on the door.  We Will All Pledge Allegiance to Transparency.

I do seem to remember this word called “honesty” as a kid, and how that was the best policy.  But transparency defines it further in practice.  It’s the policy requiring all relevant information and exchange thereof to be at all times “cc”d and shared amongst all relative parties.

That doesn’t sound like a bad idea, really.  It almost sounds like the sort of thing so many people in the stapler-and-water cooler shrines march out of mandatory diagnostic meetings furious about, the lack of that elusive thing called communication.   But unquestionably, a mandate policy on transparency will eradicate that age-old problem, post-haste.

To really understand whether or not an edict on transparency is going to do any good, we need to first figure out why, in a office building full of technology, with teams of people smarter than the room, communication, the simple-sugar building block of transparency, just doesn’t, despite every best concentrated intention, work.

A team-based work environment of any sort is the direct equivalent to a family.  While one’s work family environment may (hopefully) not be nearly as toxic as that within one’s domestic family, the template still exists.  So does the disorder.

And much like a functional family, the main ingredients that keep it running each and every day will be firmly and indestructibly in place.  Rationale is one of those.  The visibly blue sky will forever be green, until the patriarchs change their minds.  Then, there’s double standards.  They’re like those blank tiles in Scrabble.  Any interoffice ruling at large can be deemed null and void for any individual for any reason, without definition.  Or, for a transparently flimsy one, the blatantly obvious nature of which is never to be articulated in transparent form.  If you want to keep your job.

And why wouldn’t you..?!  Nothing has prepared us more for our interoffice tenures in our lives than growing up in the dysfunctional family household.  No financial-aid-available business school is going to teach this most critical component of employment foundation.  Game winners of all sorts come directly from those threatening, defeating, and emotionally exhausting family environments that many of us go home to daily when the scale-model version at work is done.  Just what are some of the tenets learned to us in the school no one pays to attend..?

There’s actually many, but maybe the most valuable and significant for personal survival regards the practice of silence.  Keeping your mouth shut often will avert the most unnecessary drama and upheaval within the family walls.  That which must be said, family survivors have long decreed, must remain unspoken if we all need to get to bed tonight and get up and go to work tomorrow.

Within that policy falls a level of discretion.  Sometimes, something needs to be addressed.  But to whom, and to whom it ought not be presented, for purposes of damage control, therein lies the acquired scientific knowledge.

This wonderful new practice called transparency sure does sound innovative, but it will only meet eyes and ears that are willing. When claims of “too technical”, “I can’t follow all that stuff..”, and “I just need you to answer my question..” abound, you know you’ve followed the transparency mandate a little too closely to the letter. 

Transparency as a policy of course, implies the desire for full visibility upon a situation.  But no one wants to see anything they don’t want to.  So, if you’ve got a mess on your hands..?  Play it up, turn the good points into something invaluable, let ‘em know how you’ve got the bad points cornered, count the blessings, curse none, and you’ve just authored a model work of transparency…!

It’s almost a shame when the chiefs corner you in the hallway months later wanting to know about that problem three months earlier that they’re first recognizing, and you proudly remind them about your highly transparent report which you e-mailed them at the time.

The answer..? “If anything like that happens again, just call us.  E-mails take too long to read, and we just want to get it fixed..”

Transparency fortunately isn’t something you can hear through.  Praise the Lord for voice mail.

I’m putting my old Phone-Mate machine up for sale. The ad describes it as “State Of The Art, Fully Transparent”.

 

Noah F.