Everyone wants transparency.

THE TRANSPARENT ORGANIZATION IS DESTINATION EMPOWERED

Open-book management (1) has a much simpler name: transparency (2). A transparent organization, because it runs its business on an open-book basis, is, by destination, empowered, in that all those who work within it will be held accountable simply by the universal knowledge of their decisions and actions. Yet it is these organizations that have the highest rate of commitment to the task, and the most lasting, because they are the truest. Everyone takes up the cause of the organization's purpose, and finds the means to fulfill their obligations, with the highest possible rate of effectiveness and efficiency (3). Transparency institutes fairness in the responsibility of the players within the organization, which can only enhance mutual trust between everyone, because it leads to self-transcendence and therefore to excellence at work.

RESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOUR FROM MANAGEMENT TO FRONT-LINE STAFF

Open-book management does not exist, moreover, simply by conventional rendering of accounts, through the publication of interposed activity reports. This practice in no way excludes the possibility that important data may be omitted, thereby distorting the interpretation of the actual results of the activity carried out. However, the purpose of accountability is not to justify one's actions after the fact, just as the purpose of responsibility is not to constrain one's decisions during the activity. In either case, the objective is to seek, by all possible means, before the fact, to accomplish the organization's mission without misappropriation of ends or means. The organization's mission cannot be validly accepted if it runs counter to the general principle of improved customer service. And customer service cannot be delivered without the intervention of the organization's staff.

STAFF SENSE LACK OF TRUST FROM SUPERIORS

Employees who sense that the organization's management methods and practices are distrustful of them, through information intentionally concealed by management, cannot commit themselves fully to their work. As a result, they are unable to take sufficient responsibility for carrying out all the tasks entrusted to them. Open-book management instills a sense of responsibility throughout the organization, from top management right down to front-line staff. The equity of treatment that this entails establishes respect for others in all inter-individual and collective relationships within the organization because it generates self-respect in the first place (4). The mutuality of respect is more important, as its absence leads to a complete breakdown in the trust required for concerted action within the organization, on which the economic activity carried out through the work rendered necessarily depends.

FREE ACCESS TO BOOKS ENABLES INFORMED JUDGEMENT OF BUSINESS ACTIVITY

Open-book management is certainly not achieved if, as is all too often the case, the organization's management confines itself solely to a declaration of principle on the subject. Genuine open-book management can only be achieved if all staff (5), whatever their level of responsibility, have free and permanent access to all documents, decisions, and projects, enabling them to make a complete and informed judgment of all current and future activities within the organization (6). The organization is a system. The distinctive feature of systems is that they are entirely, and always, dependent on the integration, synchronization, and shared effort of all their components. There is no such thing as half a system, just as there is no such thing as half a result or half a performance. System, result, and performance are non-interchangeable (7) and discretionary (8) notions, albeit assessed based on distinct indicators. Distinguishing does not mean disassociating, just as associating does not mean confusing.

OPEN-BOOK MANAGEMENT PAYS MORE THAN IT COSTS

Organizations that practice open-book management - which is still too rare, although their numbers are increasing - have higher rates of return on their work, due to a greater commitment to the task on the part of all those involved (9). And since open-book management indicates to staff that management trusts their judgment, it solicits their adherence to the mandates entrusted to them to fulfill the organization's mission. Commitment to work, under open-book management, takes on a completely different character from what it would be in the absence of open-book management (10). Employees who feel they are being treated responsibly will, in return, adopt equally responsible behaviors (11). In short, the entire structure of the business vibrates to the same rhythm (12).

TRUST IS A FACTOR IN EMPOWERMENT

As soon as trust is established in the workplace, people take on greater responsibility for their decisions and actions. This has the effect of inducing, in the production system that is the organization, the level of excellence at work that any employer seeking to optimize its results is looking for... starting from a better exploitation of its capacities, potential, and opportunities (13). There is no saving on activity (14) by increasing the level of anxiety (frustration) among rank-and-file staff, by showing them, as managers, through their behavior, decisions, and actions, a mark of non-confidence that cannot escape them.

OPEN-BOOK MANAGEMENT IS NOT ADDITIONAL INSECURITY, BUT ADDED VALUE

Open-book management pays far more than it costs (15)!

REFERENCES:

(1) Open-Book Management: Coming Business Revolution, The Paperback - 1996 - by John Case. Open-Book Management: Creating an Ownership Culture Paperback - 1998 - by Thomas L. Barton, William G. Shenkir, Thomas N. Tyson. Etc. If there's one place where open-book management and transparency are expected, it's in the public sector (government). However, the culture of deceit reigns there, and the spirit of openness loses more. And the State is not the exclusive domain of elected representatives, but the entire property of citizens. If people were to learn to manage their civil affairs transparently, the knock-on effect would be to impose it on the other fields of activity in which they are called upon to manage. We have the governments we deserve, just as we have the organizations we build. https://www.dico-citations.com/toute-nation-a-le-gouvernement-qu-elle-m-rite-maistre-joseph-de/

(2) Transparency should be understood to mean governance, management, evaluation, decisions as well as actions and projects. Of directors, managers, professionals, supervisors and staff alike. At all times and in all respects, without restriction or prior authorization. Variable-geometry transparency (management = opacity; staff = transparency) is not openness, but concealment under the guise of granted access. And anything, here as elsewhere, is nothing more than what it announces: nothing worth having.

(3) In management, effectiveness and efficiency are two distinct notions. Effectiveness is doing the right thing. Efficiency is doing the thing the right way. Example: To be an accountant means to be efficient at the task. To be an excellent accountant is to be efficient at the task. If you have people who take on the responsibilities you've assigned them, then they're efficient on the job. If those same people do their job badly, then they're not efficient.

(4) Those who lack confidence in others are unaware that they lack confidence... in the minds of others. Hence, he or she is lacking in self-esteem, since he or she voluntarily orders untrusting behavior on the part of those with whom he or she has a personal relationship.

(5) Staff includes managers, who are also employed by the organization. It's a mistake to think that staff, as the body that performs the task, excludes managers.

(6) Semi-transparency, like semi-truth, is a pipe dream.

(7) A system, a result, and a performance are integers by definition as well as by destination. A system is a whole, which may include so-called subsystems. The reason we speak of subsystems is that they are, in themselves, systems. A component is not a system, but an element of one. Accounting data is not the result of an operation on the activity carried out, but a statistical referent aggregated within it. Performance is not a series of semi-performances, just as quality is not the sum of half-quality. Things are what they are, and we need to understand them for what they represent, if we want them to serve their intended purpose. Wooden language (waffle, cant) confuses everyone, starting with those who use it.

(8) Imprecision in language can only express imprecision in the management of the organization's affairs. Confusion of genres solves nothing in organizations. And what is not managed intelligently cannot lead to an expected result, nor to optimal performance. The wasted effort that language clutter induces weighs against the effort and resources committed to raising the performance of the organization's operations. And yet, the economics of the organization demand that we get straight to the point, rather than getting lost in the sinuosity of a managerial grammar that is poorly assimilated and therefore poorly shared with others.

(9) Cases do exist. All you must do is look. He who seeks... finds, like Picasso! https://recherche-action.fr/intermedes/2012/12/15/je-ne-cherche-pas-je-trouve-picasso/

(10) There is no such thing as half-commitment. There is commitment or disengagement. Survey results (like questions) revolve around the following notions: 1) commitment; 2) disengagement; 3) non-commitment. In the first case, it's obvious. In the second, it indicates that the original commitment no longer exists. In the last case, the commitment has not yet taken place. Survey results would benefit from being expressed in net terms. If 21% of players are engaged, and 45% are disengaged for 34% are not engaged, the organization has an engagement deficit of the order of -49% (21 - (45+34) = -49%). Organizational activity, like commitment to the organization, can only really be measured in net balance, because the intervention of some directly influences the behavior of others, and hence their effort and performance, in the workplace. What is added must be subtracted from what is lost.

(11) Managers are deluding themselves if they imagine they can obtain from others what they deny to others. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Théorie_X_et_théorie_Y

(12) Managers are quick to stress the importance of a win-win relationship with their organization's customers. Strangely enough, many of them have yet to realize that a win-win relationship with customers starts with a win-win relationship with the people who do the customer relations. A win-win relationship has never been based on an imbalance in the relationship between the parties concerned.

(13) An organization that does not optimize its capacities, potential and opportunities is not a successful one... even if it generates a surplus year after year. Profitability is not the same as performance. True performance is the optimization of one's condition of being and having, in one's market, as an organization. The rest is financial results... the most ordinary kind of accrual accounting.

(14) Management reaps what it sows. Non-confidence breeds non-confidence, never commitment. Worse still, as it (lack of trust) is difficult to quantify, it stirs up a spirit of revenge that is more determined, more widespread, and more lasting than less among those who suffer it.

15) In other words, open-book management is not a risk, but a necessity. The risk is posed by minds that are incapable of opening sufficiently, in time and over the long term. And many organizations are protected enclosures of resolutely closed minds. So closed that they no longer even realize they are closed. They end up reinforcing themselves, in their closed-mindedness, and headlong into the most absolute denial of their mental, emotional, and social isolation. By approving of themselves, they maintain the “groupthink” ... that form of single-mindedness that makes vulnerable those who consider themselves unstoppable, because they are approved by those they condition to be like them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink ; https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pens%C3%A9e_unique?