5 Considerations for Timing Transparency by Anticlue

At what point is it good practice to be transparent? At what point does too much transparency look like a lack of control? A part of managing a project is to disseminate information by being the spokesperson for the project, another part is to handle disturbance and mobilize the team in support of an issue. The act of balancing these two components is where transparency happens.

Let me share a tale, we were in the middle of a groupwise to exchange conversion for the email system. We had hired temp contractors to help with the mailbox migration. As a part of the conversation, we migrated the executives mailbox and calendars during the evening hours. When the executive assistants arrived the next morning, all of the calendared appointments were migrated an hour earlier. They quickly alerted us to the problem, as we had asked them to validate first thing in the morning. Now the time when you can use the rope to either make yourself a lasso or a noose. What you communicate, how you say it, and when you say it is crucial. When is it time to be transparent?

The 5 considerations for Timing Transparency

1. Listen to the impacted customer and have a plan to address their concerns - It is important to take time and hear the problem, often this is done via the war room helpdesk. With executives and executive assistants, visiting, watching, and listening is important. If there isn't a quick fix, honesty is important, but so is control. Set up the best way to communicate resolution and progress. Also see if there is a temporary work around for right now. If the problem is net new, transparency as to the cause and approach to resolution should be focused upon research and when to get back to the affected individuals.
2. Don't let the upward management chain be surprised. - Another key is to not let your director or CIO be surprised. If the problem is at the executive level, it is best to communicate using your chain of command. In most cases the management team will be supportive and help facilitate the executive's problem resolution. Transparency here should be around getting the team engaged and working towards resolution.
3. Assure the team is aware and focused upon resolution. - Assure the team is aware, in most cases, they will have creative and good solutions to resolve the problem. If they engage in a blamestorming behavior, it is time to re-group and get the team focused on problem resolution. The pm should be clearly transparent with the team of the problem. Establish check back in points, so the team can work but you as the PM are aware of progress and obstacles. As the pm, facilitate the removal of any obstacle, and be prepared for good communications to the customer base.
4. Have scheduled controlled communications to the executive suites. - As a part of accountability, be sure to have consistent informative communications with the executive suite. Assure the communicate is fine tuned for the audience, and has an anticipated resolution time if there is one.
5. After the problem is resolved, assure it never occurs again - After the firestorm, it is a good item to look at what happened. Find out why it occurred, and what could be done to prevent the problem again. In the above scenario, the machine doing the account migration had the wrong time zone. This was removed by adding a double check to the timezones, when setting up a migrating machine. The added quality control should be communicated to your leadership chain.

Hopefully you enjoyed this post, you may also want to check out:

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• How to do a waste walk with Strategic Intent


• Talking the lean jargon

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