Back to Basics with Todd Eccles: Transparency

I've had a lot of business experience with companies of all sizes. I've been the CEO of organizations with as little as 15 employees to as many as 600+, and been on the Sr. Leadership Team for public companies with 26k+ employees. No matter the size, there has consistently been one theme that applied to all companies:

Transparency

Stated another way: As the boss, how much information can I (or should I) share with my team?

Not all information should be shared, let me start with that. But—and it’s a big one—as the boss, you are most likely not sharing enough. People make decisions based on data. When they don’t have enough information, there is one thing you can bet on: they will invent it.

For example, let’s pretend you withhold how much monthly revenue the company makes. Let's say it’s 40k. Without this data, employees might think the monthly revenue is 75k and you’re taking it to the bank! Or worse, they might think you’re only making 25k and burning through savings to get the business through a bad time.

I often get this question, “How much should I share?”

Being transparent is key to employee longevity, so I will often answer, “Share as much as you can that you are comfortable with. Then, share a little more.” My team knows how much cash we have in the bank, what our sales are, our profit, new customers, churned customers, and on and on and on. I do this because it empowers them with the whole picture of how the business is doing and allows them to determine what’s important to work on to improve the scenario.

To this end, Kickserv is now going to offer better tools to do just that. First up is a new dashboard that will optimize using our software at a glance. This update starts out with the basics, but we will continue to add new widgets over time. Soon, you’ll be able to customize your dashboard to see the exact insights you need to quickly make decisions to run (and improve) your business. You can check out our sneak peek here.

In a nutshell, get out of your comfort zone and be more transparent with your team. It might feel strange at first, but the payoff is more than worth it! In the long run, your team will appreciate knowing where the company stands because they’ll know where they fit in. They’ll be more loyal, productive, and happy as a result.