Would you of ever thought one of the largest brands and largest communication platforms in the world would be discussing transparency and the decision making with in their corporation publicly? Even crazier, they let it happen on a podcast hosted by a stoner comedian. Then, they also let someone who is staunchly against their practices grill them over those practices for 3+ hours, all uncut for the world to see.
It happened on the Joe Rogan Experience. While I’m not naive enough to think everything said in this podcast will come to fruition. I do applaud the move to have this conversation. It proves mistakes can be made and fessed up to, in order to rebuild trust.
I hope many can understand this idea and learn from it.
Warning, the first 30 to 45 minutes are a bit tough, there is a lot of ground work being laid and obviously planned paths of conversation that run their course fruitlessly. But, the power of not being able to plan for a 3+ hour open and undefined conversation leads to some great opportunities for bridge building.
If you watch the episode, the discussion is more on the value of trust gained from fuller transparency.
As we are a volunteer run group, building trust helps us attract more volunteers while also keeping our current volunteers happier. Loss of trust has negative result to the willingness to volunteer in my experience.
I can attest to the virtuous cycle of transparency/trust/increased participation, albeit on a much smaller scale. Was unexpectedly made president of a library fundraising board (long story) when we implemented a transparency policy. I say “we”, but the board was only two of us and had died to the level of a slush fund for the librarians. One librarian could sign the checks. We-the-Two-of-Us had the choice of closing the org or going radical and remaking it. We opted for a one year experiment in transparency with the goal to close it down if nothing improved - inspired by the Wired article I linked above.
Cold-called the members to explain. Asked them to be part of the experiment by signing on to the board. Open meetings with minutes, of course. Since we were not bricks and mortar, we decided to set our annual budget by obligating 100% of the monies collected the previous year. We would hold on to anything collected in the current year (thereby never running the checking account too low and triggering fees). Posted a transaction-level copy of our monthly financials on the library. Posted the monthly bank statement & budget/actuals. Checks required two signatures. Shared the day-to-day details via an email list. Published our mistakes, struggles and successes.
Every time an article hit the news about embezzlement in a non-profit (shockingly common, btw), we sent out an email with the link and a paragraph about (a) how we were fiduciaries holding their money in trust, (b) here are our procedures to prevent such happenings and (c ) our transparency policy, i.e. how they could clearly see our operations for themselves.
The response was overwhelming. Existing members chose higher dues levels. New members joined. Never struggled to fill a 9-member board. We were awarded two large grants, one from AT&T ($13K), the other from Central Market ($10K). A few years down the road, we discovered that members were adding us to their wills, unbidden (that still brings tears to my eyes). We never knew until too late to say thank you. I was president for 6 years until term limits kicked in. That board is still going strong under completely new leadership and is loved in our neighborhood.
Yeah, I love hearing stories like this. In fact, @bertberaht told me one of his successes recently while he was working in the Plastics Industry. His story was more about restoring trust when it was lost and the fault was undoubtedly on his company. He explained how fessing up to the issue instead of getting stuck in dodging blame helped restore trust and willingness to work together. I’d love for him to share the fuller story to our group. It is another great example of the power of transparency and how it can help even when your in the wrong.
Worth mentioning: Our members and directors were typically older “committee women/men”, meaning they had decades of committee and board experience. Hard core. Not just PTA and church stuff. Big Orgs with Big Money. This new way of operating stopped them dead in their tracks. Made them rethink everything they had been doing before. They wanted to learn why this system was working and how could they implement it in their other orgs. Some members quit organizations of which they were long-time members because they couldn’t tolerate the lack of transparency. That was unexpected.
Yeah,
I feel lucky in the fact that I was able to see all the successes of early DMS thanks to the transparency and trust gained from it. It is like I’ve already been infected by the virus and just don’t want to go back to the other power structures as well.
I have some experience with corporate and non-profit credit cards and I think a lot of money could be saved just by publishing credit card charges monthly. Committee members should be able to see how committee funds are being spent and they should be able to vote without being overruled by a stack of proxies…
5 directors for DMS was fine when we were at 30-100 members. Time to add more, stagger terms, and lessen the load. Push Management to a management level and put greater trust in committees.
Yes!!! And maybe time we figure out how to make the by-laws a bit more pliable as well so that we can make those kinds of changes without dissolving the space first.
