Nudity is the New Transparency

Oh no I've said too much
I haven't said enough...
- Losing My Religion, R.E.M.

See me, feel me
Touch me, heal me.
- Go to the Mirror!, Tommy, The Who

"What you say on Twitter may be viewed all around the world instantly. You are what you Tweet!"
- Twitter Terms of Service

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
- Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, in The Huffington Post

"Corporate transparency is touted as being good for a corporation's image, and is a key ingredient in compliance and governance. Transparent companies inspire more trust...But is such corporate transparency really such a good thing?...Still, opacity (or intransparency) is an even bigger risk. Not showing what you're doing is simply not accepted anymore."
- Frank Buytendijk, Vice President and Fellow, Enterprise Performance Management, Oracle, on his blog

"...there's no use trying to resist. You're already naked."
- Clive Thompson, The See-Through CEO, Wired

"Six drops of essence of terror, five drops of sinister sauce...and now for the tincture of tenderness..."
- Professor Weirdo creating Milton the Monster

"You're only as sick as your secrets."
- Saying known in therapy and recovery circles, probably most famously uttered by Carrie Fisher

As a CEO, how transparent do I have to be? On my corporate bio page, next to the standard shot in the biz suit, will I need a tasteful nude pose like the Ladies of Rylstone?

While “transparency” as a business term became common after corporate financial and ethical violations, corporate leaders themselves have been asked to adopt personal transparency as they blog and tweet.

What is the purpose of personal CEO transparency?

In the business-to-business realm, if people do business with people, and people do business with people they know because they believe they can trust them more than with people they don’t know, and trust is perceived as decreasing risk, whereas not knowing people with whom they might deal is perceived as increasing risk, how much do people need to know about people to do business with them?

If people know not only a company’s mission, products, services, and financials, but its founder and leader - what he or she thinks, feels and does - are they more likely to do business with the company?

If the CEO presents himself or herself beyond “what you see is what you get” to transparency – being able to see through surface appearances – will that engender that "It's who you know" trust that increases the likelihood of business?

If the answer to "Will people do more business with my company if I am a transparent CEO?" is probably "Yes," then it might be time to find a discreet photographer.

If you’re familiar with triathlon togs - trisuits - then you know I’ve already pretty much been nude in public, especially when emerging from the swim, especially when I forgot to lock the porta-potty door in front of lines of hundreds of waiting triathletes.  I’m desensitized.  No big deal.

What I hear fellow CEOs struggle with is nudity of the heart, mind and spirit. I hear their concerns about the consequences of dismantling privacy fences, of secrets revealed, of that deepest fear - of not being accepted for who we truly are.

For me, I’ve had my dark nights of the soul.  I’ll have more.  I’ve had what Schmidt describes as “something that you don’t want anyone to know” and realized I didn’t want to know it, either.  Like the cartoon character Milton the Monster, though, I’m comprised of both the sinister and the tender. Like R.E.M., I’m torn that I’ve said too much and not enough at the same time.  And I’ve experienced, and witnessed, the risk and terrible cost of Buytendijk’s “intransparency,” of the sickness of secrets, almost unto death.

I think a secretive path, corporate or personal, is fraught with peril.

As a CEO, I have chosen a great deal of personal transparency.  Will it result in more business for my company?

Maybe not more.  But I bet my company, and companies with whom we can do good business, will recognize each other. I’m not a fan of attempting to control what others think and feel, of attempting to "make" people accept a "projection of a corporate image," regardless of the reality of the corporation.

From my company, what you see is what you get, and then some, down to the skin if need be.

Comments

[Mark W Schaefer]

A lovely post, Anne.

For me, the answer is not necessarily "transparency," but "honesty + humanity." That's a formula that works for me any way -- hmmm... feel a blog post coming on -- see, we inspire each other : )

I appreciate it when people are honest and display humanity by occasionally talking about their family, hopes, problems, etc. but the permanent social web is no place for unvarnished disclosure, IMO.

Thanks for the great post!

[Patsy Stewart]

Great post Anne. During my trainings for Job Seekers I constantly remind them "if you wouldn't want your Mother to see it then don't put it online". A little reminder for business leaders too!
Happy Holidays!!

[Alex]

We have different classes of interactions with different classes of people, and for each, we are trying to send some set of signals. For interactions in which we try to establish alliances, we usually try to signal things like consistency, honesty, reliability, and trustworthiness. Appearing transparent helps with all of these. But maintaining such an image doesn't require unvarnished disclosure. I suspect that people are willing to categorize their relationships, and are satisfied with us if we send the appropriate signals within the category. For instance, we're happy as clients of some business if that business makes the terms of our agreements clear, honors them completely, and sometimes makes an extra effort to retain us, and we don't expect transparency in trade secrets or finances, because the alliance we're forming doesn't particularly depend on the latter. Or more personally, we're happy with casual acquaintances whom we run into at parties twice a year if they remember our names and tell amusing stories, and we don't expect them to share their innermost turmoil - in fact, we dislike it when they do.

So a nude photo captioned "we hide nothing from our clients" will probably make a good impression (plus signaling a sense of humor, etc.), but a nude photo captioned "I've been working out, trying to stay in good health - hey, how old would you say I look?" would probably fall into the wrong interaction category and cause discomfort.

[Anne Giles Clelland]

“We’re so transparent, we’re naked!”

I wonder if this will be a corporate marketing slogan in 2010, complete with pics. Or, gee, a YouTube video.

Thanks for your comment, Mark. I am open to this being true - “the permanent social web is no place for unvarnished disclosure” - but I need to understand why not. For a CEO, what are the criteria for “this is okay to disclose” and “this is not okay to disclose”?

I liked your point about questioning whether one’s mother would be okay with online content, Patsy. I heard a funny version recently: “If you can’t tell Santa you want it, you shouldn’t want it!”

On the continuum of “okayness,” for a CEO, where do the external and internal criteria lie? What if the CEO’s mother is opposed to all online content and has taken every measure she can to keep all identifying information about herself offline? What if the CEO’s mother is writing a tell-all blog and sees no content as off limits? Those are extreme examples, and what’s acceptable for online content will probably never be either-or and will take a judgment call. Still, relative standards are unsatisfying to me.

Alex, your points make great sense. Herein is the challenge for me: “We have different classes of interactions with different classes of people…” When I put content online, I have no control over who sees it or what kind of interactions they have with it. Over six billion people could potentially read this blog post. They might judge it “unvarnished disclosure” or "honesty + humanity." I don’t have control over how my content is perceived.

Given that a CEO doesn’t have control over what others will think, feel, or do as a result of reading his or her online content, what’s a CEO to do?

I continue to explore this question and thank you so much for you thoughtful coments.

[Anne Giles Clelland]

Here's a view of transparency from Business Week, "Naked Consulting: What Clients Really Want":

http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/feb2010/ca20100219_514312.htm?link_position=link17