How embracing transparency is scary, and essential, for healthy organizational leadership
From Renee: Our series on healthy leadership continues with this post from Corey Newhouse and Jessica Manta-Meyer on steps that Public Profit, a consulting firm, has taken to become a healthier, more transparent organization.
We are Corey Newhouse and Jessica Manta-Meyer, leaders of Public Profit, which helps mission-driven organizations use data to make better decisions, enhance the quality of their services, and benefit the communities they serve. Corey founded Public Profit in 2007 and Jes joined in 2011.
As an organization with historically white leadership, Public Profit has been on a yearslong journey to be more transparent with our colleagues, who are predominately people of color. Like many leaders, our early professional experiences were influenced by workplaces where information was kept to a small circle, which is a common characteristic of white supremacy culture in organizations.
Those early experiences taught us that transparency can be scary.
What if our team disagrees with the choices we have made? What if they get spooked about the organization’s future and decide to work elsewhere? What if we miss the opportunity to be transparent about an important choice? What if…? It’s a long list.
With the courage and persistence from our team, especially our colleagues who identify as women of color, we are building new habits of transparency. It demonstrates trust in our colleagues, encourages participation, and contributes to a positive company culture.
We realize that many organizations are on a similar journey, so we share it in hopes that other leaders will find inspiration and confidence from our experience.
Here are five steps we have taken to work and lead with more transparency:
1) We intentionally create space for discussion and questions:
We host monthly live “ask me anything” sessions with our leadership team. Team members can submit a question anonymously through a web form or ask in person. In the years we have done this, questions have ranged from everything from, “ can we have more snacks in the kitchen?” to, “ what’s the strategic direction for the company?” Questions and responses are recorded in a common document, visible to the whole team.
2) We conduct a yearly staff satisfaction survey, and the results guide our work in the upcoming year
We conduct a staff satisfaction survey each year that includes topics like satisfaction with supervision, opportunities for learning and growth, responsiveness of leadership, and support from colleagues. Aggregated results are shared with the full team; we use the lower-rated items as a guide for special projects for the coming year.
3) We practice budget transparency
Our budget, including anticipated revenues, expenses, and profit, are shared with the team at the start of the year. We give a mid-year and end-of-year update on the company’s finances, as well. In the future, we hope to pilot a transparent process for how we allocate some of the company’s discretionary dollars.
4) We practice workload transparency
Team members’ current project assignments and estimated workload are available for anyone in the company to see. Supervisors use these projections to assure that work is roughly evenly distributed among team members. We are piloting two methods to increase transparency for initial project assignments; we engaged members of our team to co-create those methods.
5) We benchmark salaries and share what we are learning.
Public Profit benchmarks salaries and benefits to similar organizations in our field and shares the starting salary ranges for all positions with our team.
More recently, members of our four-person leadership team have taken on special projects that support organizational goals. We will share those “big rocks” with the team and will report on our progress roughly quarterly. This is meant to demonstrate how we are responding to the team’s needs, and to hold ourselves accountable for timely progress. (See the book Traction for more on this idea.)
We have learned that increased transparency is well worth it. Team members feel more trusted and included than before, and there’s greater trust in us as leaders. It is still scary from time to time, and we still sometimes miss opportunities to share important information with the team. Like pretty much everything with leadership, it is a continual learning edge for us. It is a path we are glad to be on.
From Renee: The Ross Collective is a smaller consulting firm than Public Profit. We are inspired by their leadership and the practices Corey, Jessica and the team have put into place so that the process of their work incorporates the kind of change we are each seeking to put into the world. As you read this post, what resonated with you? Are there practices that your organization is already doing or are there some that you would like to do?
In our work with our clients, we encourage them to incorporate the equity practices described in this essay. Our strategic planning process includes a fiscal review – so that leaders and all staff and board members to talk about the budget openly and understand the choices that the organization is making.
Next time, we’ll conclude the series with a post on community practices for leadership.