Towards a culture of transparency: is privacy an illusion?
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In a world where you can be anything, be … Open.
Here are 4 reasons you need a transparent company culture. (TL/DR: productivity will go through the roof, literally everything will be better).
Here are 5 benefits of transparency in a relationship. (Better trust, better connection, better everything).
In this article, I examined why we need transparency in supply chains — because opaque systems hide atrocious, pernicious negative externalities in the current global trade ecosystem. You know, like slavery, inequality, environmental degradation, deforestation, groundwater exhaustion and transboundary pollution. We can’t keep looking away for much longer.
And here are 10 reasons transparency is great at a government level.
Honestly, the benefits of transparency in government are probably endless — but I’m a big fan of Sweden’s approach, where everything happens out in the open. All government communications are published — including (*gasp) military strategy. For the rest of the world, where this kind of information is extremely, extremely, extremely classified, was this an own goal for Sweden? Nope. In fact, the Swedes gained themselves a competitive advantage.
Because here’s why it’s a genius play — it saved Sweden a lot of money. No more classifying things, hiding things, concealing strategic decision making, wasting money constructing and maintaining convoluted smoke and mirrors. Sweden knows that satellite imagery is so advanced today that it’s practically a near real-time livestream, so everyone can see what everyone else is up to anyway. So when Sweden made this power move, they could invest all that money they saved into Being A Better Country. It will low-key force other governments to do the same — otherwise they’ll lose their competitive edge.
Because concealing your hand costs a great deal of time, money, energy, resources — especially compared to transparency. Which is free, incidentally.
End to end visibility is where it’s at, friends.
