On contrived transparency

Lest you think I had gone all soft in my last post, here's something that really irritated me today. Aaron Brazell (technosailor) wrote this post about contrived transparency and it made me realize I came across something similar today.

Brazell talks about it in his post in relation to social media:

"Contrived transparency indicates that this notion of being honest and open is not a culturally accepted thing in a company. It’s a strategic decision made to drive sales. It’s a devious, and by it’s very nature, non-transparent way of saying, “You’re stupid enough to believe that I’m a great person to do business with because I’m doing all the right things and sending all the right signals”.

Yep. Contrived transparency.

Guy: Maybe when we’re done here, we can go back to my place.
Girl: Sure, but you do know that I’m not going to sleep with you on the first date, right?
Guy: Oh, I wasn’t thinking that at all!

Yeah, right."

This quote might not make the point succintly enough, so feel free to read his short post, but I thought it was funny.

Anyway, my experience of it was not to do with social media, but with generational issues. I was invited to attend a discussion group about the topic. The group is one that is normally CEO-only, and in their last meeting they talked about succession planning; generational issues came up, and they thought, what a good idea it would be if everyone here invited a Gen-X or Millenial colleague to the next meeting so we can get their perspective! So far so, good, so I am invited and show up with my boss. It was a small group, but we had a really pretty good conversation about how younger staffers need to be valued in a systematic, organizational way and allowed to grow professionally, like many corporate companies do/have for their interns or mentees, and in return they will be invested in the associations they work for and in the industry as a whole. I mentioned the Post article that I blogged about here, and there seemed to be general agreement that these issues are important and will only get more serious if they are not paid attention to NOW (BEFORE the boomers start to retire and there is no one left or willing to take their places).

But at the end of the meeting, I said, thanks for the opportunity to participate, and, this is a perfect example of a very easy way to engage younger staff that costs nothing! Invite them, on a regular basis, to participate in discussion groups like this, with top-level execs, where they can either share their experiences of whatever the topic might be, or they can sit back and listen and learn about things like governance, board relations, general legal issues, etc. And bam! all of a sudden I started to sense some pushback... like oh, but, maybe not the discussions about boards, what if the CEOs did not feel free to say things in front of their younger staff? Like we don't hear everything about everything already, at least in small organizations...

CONTRIVED TRANSPARENCY. We want to look like we care about generational issues, but when it comes to actually doing something to address those issues, well, so long, nice to meet you, buh-bye!

OK then. Have fun sleeping in the bed you made.