When Transparency Falls Short

For starters, no one is doing anything wrong when attempting to be transparent.?The reason for this article is to share a conversation about culture, hiring & retention held between my business partner and a former Fortune 100 executive.?It is revealing!!

As an executive recruiter for over 25 years, I am always seeking, extoling, encouraging authentic (which is to say transparent) stories that go beyond surface level “what’s” – from both the employers and (prospective) employees with whom I speak.?My encouragement sounds like this; “When both parties get to know the other; when both see each other for WHO they actually are and not simply what they have done or what they do, and then chose each other, the hiring process stands to produce a far superior outcome.”?There is a lot more to this but the key virtue here is TRANSPARENCY.

Now for the conversation the two aforementioned gentleman had – or a very close version of it.?My partner, Harry, was speaking to Dave about transparency in the recruitment process – Harry has been recruiting for over 30 years and is a true expert in the space.?Dave, listening intently, responds with the following observation; yes, transparency is vital and we worked hard to build an interview process around full transparency during the hiring process, unfortunately, it did not result in better hiring/retention performance.?

Wait, what????How could that be?

Here is ‘the rest of the story’.?During the interview process, prospective candidates are told in no uncertain terms, the environment at said company is very demanding, high performing, and choke-full of talented and intelligent people.?All true!?Candidates were told candidly that the roller coaster was fast-moving and if they did not like fast-moving roller coasters they should NOT get on.?Great advice!!

So, what happened? And more importantly why??

Here is the ‘what happened’ part of the story.?Candidates were very inspired by the idea of working in such an environment.?It promised challenge, pace, promotion, and compensation.?It was easy for candidates to see themselves thrive in this culture; and they would sign up.?The problem was, despite the transparency, they did not thrive, and turnover rates remained the same.?

Here is an analogy (or two) to explain the ‘why it happened’ part of the story. The roller coaster looks like great fun…until your nausea prompted an apology to the innocent young couple behind you on the roller coaster who had just taken a face-full of your Sweet Martha’s cookies.?I suspect I (and most others) would get off that ride real fast instead of building the resilience necessary to endure, and ultimately maybe even enjoy, its hectic pace.?Or, how about this; the results of your best friends work with a fitness trainer inspired you to sign up with the same trainer – who couldn’t stand to lose a few pounds.?However, after a ‘successful’ week 1 with the trainer, your alarm clock buzzes week 2, Monday morning at 4:30 AM, to which you say; “there is no way I can keep this up” – and you promptly text your trainer a weak excuse and go back to sleep.?This probably represents most of humanity – including me.?It is relatively easy to bail on ourselves in this way.

“How do you achieve better results”, you ask?

The simple answer to this conundrum is to add another ‘T-word’ to the equation.?If the first T word is Transparency what could the second one be??After all, 2 T’s must be better than one, right??Yes!?By adding TRANSCENDENCE to our equation, we can move a person outside of themselves, focusing their efforts on others.?The principle being, it is much harder to let others down than it is to let yourself down.

Change the focus of your already transparent story.?Instead of focusing on what the employee will get – challenge, pace, promotion, compensation, etc., focus on how the high demand, high performance, talented culture works incredibly hard to accomplish the (noble) mission and purpose of the company.?You will have to be clear about your mission and purpose if you want this to work.?This redirects the person to something other than what they get and directs their gaze to something (transcendent) which will have a much greater chance to build the resilience necessary for a person to thrive in this environment.?This does NOT mean everyone will thrive, but it will create a likelihood that a lot more will.?Think of it this way – if you could save your favorite charity from extinction simply by losing 20lbs over the next 2 months, would you get up every day at 4:30 to work with your trainer??Me too!!?Maybe not everyone would, but a lot more would fight for that charity than they would for themselves.?

Every year Special Olympics Minnesota gets hundreds (maybe thousands) of people to jump into freezing cold lakes in January – IN MINNESOTA!!?I wonder how many of those individuals would do that if it were not connected to a purpose/mission-based transcendent end.?Seriously, how many people would do something so dumb if it was simply about an experience for themselves.?

Hubert Joly’s resurrection of Best Buy is a great example of how this works, and proof that it does work.?Firstly, he did not ‘cut, cut, cut’ to survive.?The team that was there when he started his tenure, was broadly the team he worked with to turn the company around.?He purposely treated layoffs as a last resort.?One of the most important things he did was to simply refocus employees to a transcendent end - and the results were dramatic.?Same people, new focus, dramatically different results.?I do realize Hubert made several moves that all helped – but this one was significant.

In his book, The Heart of Business he uses a short anecdote as an analogy to describe what impact a reframed focus sounds like from the employee perspective.?In the anecdote he describes 2 masons from the Middle Ages who were asked about their work.?The first answers mundanely (implied), “Do you see, I am cutting stones”, while the second answers enthusiastically (implied), “I build Cathedrals”.??Same jobs different focus, different energy & different results.?You’ll have to read Hubert’s amazing book if you want to learn the details of his story.?It is the best leadership book I have personally ever read.?

The upshot of all this? ?Refocus your transparent story to include a transcendent noble purpose/mission and watch human beings (and your business) come to life.