5 ms·

It seems like in most communication decisions, being secretive loses you a lot more through misunderstandings and missed opportunities than you gain from contro

by sgentle 15y ago

It seems like in most communication decisions, being secretive loses you a lot more through misunderstandings and missed opportunities than you gain from control. At least, I've seen a lot of articles written asserting this, and my own experience backs it up. I wonder if it's always true, or if not what the boundary conditions are. Apple, for example, seem to play on their secrecy quite well as a marketing technique, and it seems the Unity developers on that Reddit AMA had been cautioned against revealing planned features to avoid disappointing people. The cynic in me thinks it makes you feel powerful and in control to have secrets, and that's the main reason why transparency is rare. I'd be interested to hear counter-examples, though - does anyone know cases where being secretive worked out to be a great business decision?

meric 15y ago
You listed Apple as an example of secretive as a marketing technique being a "great business decision". I can list HP as an example of transparency as a marketing technique being a "not so great business decision". Why is that? bhorowitz's transparency was certainly not a marketing technique. From this we infer that there must be at least two types of transparency. Being transparent with people who are with you, and being secretive with people who are not. ...I guess its not a coincidence that people share more with their closest ones than with house guests. On another note, this article reminded me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler
- sgentle 15y ago
  I suppose so, and there are examples of massive fallout from the public finding out about internal decisions; Elop's Nokia memo springs to mind. Is it as simple as transparency to your friends, opacity elsewhere though? My first thought is that some of those situations reflect genuinely bad business decisions, and maybe it's better to take the public hit immediately rather than struggle on in secret doing something whose dumbness is only visible to people outside your reality distortion field. The other thing is, how do you distinguish between people who are with you and not? As the article noted, once you tell employees the information often ends up outside the company anyway. And not all employees are necessarily with you - they might agree with the broad mission of your company but disagree with how you're executing it, like the Nokia Plan B thing (although that turned out to be a hoax). Should you try to exclude people like that? I should clarify that I'm not sure if Apple's secretiveness is a "great business decision", merely that it seems to work for them in terms of marketing. Would a company like Apple work better or worse if they operated more in the open? Unfortunately, there's only one Apple so it's hard to know. That Semler article was interesting. Have you read Maverick? Would you recommend it?
  - meric 15y ago
    Good points. >> That Semler article was interesting. Have you read Maverick? Would you recommend it? Yeah, it's a great read, I do recommend it.
- mgkimsal 15y ago
  In what ways was/is HP transparent? Maybe I'm thinking you're just referring to the touchpad, where they seemed to be open about some stuff, but secretive (or more likely just incompetent/indecisive) about other important stuff (getting SDKs in to dev hands, for example).
  - meric 15y ago
    Yeah, that's what I was referring to.

by sgentle 15y ago

meric 15y ago

You listed Apple as an example of secretive as a marketing technique being a "great business decision". I can list HP as an example of transparency as a marketing technique being a "not so great business decision". Why is that? bhorowitz's transparency was certainly not a marketing technique. From this we infer that there must be at least two types of transparency. Being transparent with people who are with you, and being secretive with people who are not. ...I guess its not a coincidence that people share more with their closest ones than with house guests. On another note, this article reminded me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler

sgentle 15y ago
I suppose so, and there are examples of massive fallout from the public finding out about internal decisions; Elop's Nokia memo springs to mind. Is it as simple as transparency to your friends, opacity elsewhere though? My first thought is that some of those situations reflect genuinely bad business decisions, and maybe it's better to take the public hit immediately rather than struggle on in secret doing something whose dumbness is only visible to people outside your reality distortion field. The other thing is, how do you distinguish between people who are with you and not? As the article noted, once you tell employees the information often ends up outside the company anyway. And not all employees are necessarily with you - they might agree with the broad mission of your company but disagree with how you're executing it, like the Nokia Plan B thing (although that turned out to be a hoax). Should you try to exclude people like that? I should clarify that I'm not sure if Apple's secretiveness is a "great business decision", merely that it seems to work for them in terms of marketing. Would a company like Apple work better or worse if they operated more in the open? Unfortunately, there's only one Apple so it's hard to know. That Semler article was interesting. Have you read Maverick? Would you recommend it?
- meric 15y ago
  Good points. >> That Semler article was interesting. Have you read Maverick? Would you recommend it? Yeah, it's a great read, I do recommend it.
mgkimsal 15y ago
In what ways was/is HP transparent? Maybe I'm thinking you're just referring to the touchpad, where they seemed to be open about some stuff, but secretive (or more likely just incompetent/indecisive) about other important stuff (getting SDKs in to dev hands, for example).
- meric 15y ago
  Yeah, that's what I was referring to.