Culture is a powerful instrument; sharing your culture publicly not only grants you visibility but also reveals your vulnerabilities. When speaking about culture, transparency has become our badge of honor. Despite fierce competition, many founders and CEOs have realized the long-term benefits of transparency as a way to strengthen internal engagement and become a trusted resource within the community.
Arriving at the decision to actually be transparent about your work, as opposed to merely stating you value transparency, may come from experiencing a lack of it. Jason Henrichs of PerkStreet Financial, Rand Fishkin of Moz, and Joel Gascoigne of Buffer are fans of transparency and aren't shy about sharing their stories.
At PerkStreet, transparency provides momentum to the team. Jason Henrichs, COO of PerkStreet, looks back at his experience running a previous company: “whenever my partner and I were out, the rumor mill kicked into high gear and we spent a disproportionate amount of time regaining positive inertia.” Henrichs leads his team in a way that maximizes sharing information — including, each week, the state of their personal finances.
We are a mission driven company and everyone on the team is passionate about helping Americans live better financial lives. We live this out in our company culture by regularly talking about our individual financial goals and habits. It helps highlight the challenges we all face as well as uncovering ways we can serve our customers better.
In an Xconomy article on transparency, Rand Fishkin of Moz points to a time in Moz's history when he was not leading with transparency, which led to the possibility of bankruptcy and a lot of personal turmoil. After amassing nearly half a million in credit card debt and not telling his father, Fishkin realized it was time to change. “I don't care how dirty the laundry is, we're going to be transparent about it,” he said. Operating with this newfound sense of purpose has been rewarding for Fishkin.
Another article, from 99U, details how Joel Gascoigne of Buffer takes transparency to the extreme and discloses his salary as well as the formula for calculating salaries for everyone on his team. Gascoigne uses transparency as a tool to normalize the culture and communicate expectations, taking it one step at a time rather than plunging into full transparency all at once.
Of course there are disadvantages to being so transparent, but most folks agree that having a longer-term goal of transparency is a priority, since it's become a value employees in our startup environment expect. Who knows, there might even be a place for salary transparency in startup cultures looking to eliminate the gender pay gap.