The Transparency Paradox.

 

If everybody has access to the right and real information, better and faster decisions would be made, right?

Transparency sounds like an awesome enabler for adaption.

I was chanting all about the healing power of "shining light" (being transparent) a few months ago in "How Open Is Your Project":

"If you are working in a closed system with feedback just from within the system, the information can get contaminated. Unchallenged groupthink can lead to biased opinions about the state of the investment."

So yeah. Transparency. Yay!

But throwing all our stuff into the open also has a drawback. A huge one.

One drawback that makes transparency almost useless as an enabler for adaption. As The Creator of Resilience.

Transparency makes sure people’s behavior will be noted around the globe. Although with a good reputation a lot is to gain, having a bad rep puts a lot at stake. So people will play things save. They will create low-risk behavior, resulting in the end into mediocrity.

A good example of this is illustrated by the following:

“While the typical CEO is only too happy to pocket the lucrative financial rewards that come with the mantle of leadership, some seem reluctant to accept this degree of accountability – especially if it means personally taking the rap for non-compliance with the law. I guess not many corporate heads are convinced that a minimum-security sabbatical in an orange jumpsuit will be as good for their careers as it seems to have been for Martha Stewart’s.”


An example from a country where radical transparency is practiced for years in government, Sweden:

"But even as it takes its transparency laws for granted, Sweden has long debated whether absolute openness leads, paradoxically, to greater secrecy. In 2004 Inga-Britt Ahlenius, a Swede working on transparency issues within the United Nations, […] tried to review government files, she found only “empty boxes.” “The principle has come to discourage its original purpose,” she added. “It is quite logical: if you are concerned that things will be made immediately public, you do not write it on paper.”"


Total transparency can result in a mediated information flow and "playing-it-safe" behavior.

Disastrous for resilience.

Humans have a preference to fail conservatively.  The idea behind this is that people would rather choose an option that they know, that they have done in the past, even if the outcome is likely to be unsuccessful, than try something new, where the outcome may be positive, but unsure. If they fail, they can also hide behind the notion that they did everything everybody else is also doing.

So. When stress is on the system, when changes occur and resilience is required, transparency leads to mediated information flow and "playing-it-safe" behavior.

In the situation that "transperancy" is most needed for resilience, it is the least effective.

That's the transperancy paradox.

I think the problem lies within total transparency. If information flows freely within the boundaries of a safe place, less negative side effects will occur.

But protecting these boundaries, that is another challenge.
 

Bas de Baar is a writer who draws about people in transition. He loves to make visual maps and travel guides for the collaborators of our brave new world.