Transparency and Trust: Where Does Your Tension Come From?

Transparency and trust are not the same thing. 

Transparency in an organization creates systems in which progress is tracked and people are accountable to each other. 

Trust in an organization creates a culture in which people believe in each other to get the job done, because they’re all working toward the same goal. 

With the word “transparency,” think of public Google Calendars, time tracking software, and instant messaging apps. How you spend your time, to a large degree, is public knowledge within an organization. If you sleep on the job, people will know. There’s a certain amount of deliberate tension here, as tension is the currency of productivity. Where there is no tension, there is no motivation produce. These transparent systems create enough tension to motivate each individual.

With the word “trust,” think of a small group of individuals who are building a startup. The work gets done on the clock, off the clock, in public, on airplanes, behind closed doors. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know exactly what your team members are doing at any given moment. You trust them enough to deliver on their promises. The tension here comes from a shared goal. Everyone hangs their hopes on what the organization is trying to accomplish. Again, tension is important and necessary, but the source of the tension comes from this shared goal. Will you accomplish it? 

Here’s my take: Deep work can only happen in organizations where there is trust. Deep work is a team or individual going off the grid to create something or solve a problem. No time trackers here. No instant message interruptions allowed. The ironic thing with deep work is that you can sleep on the job. That is to say, if a person or team is in the thick of solving a problem, and needs a nap to rejuvenate, that’s the smartest thing they can do. Every action in deep work is aimed toward accomplishing a goal–even naps. Trust is essential when allowing individuals and teams to go off the grid and make their own choices like this.

That said, organizations with more than two people need systems for transparency. They increase efficiency, as people don’t need to ask for an update on every step of the process. They lower risk, as low performance can be seen and corrected quickly. But they also decrease the quality of work from people who could become high-leverage contributors. Moving from transparency to trust should be the goal of every organization. Start your new team members on a transparent system. Spend the first chunk of time aligning them on the organization’s goals. Get them invested to what you’re working toward. Then, afford them more trust as time goes on. In many cases, you’ll see their quality of work skyrocket with more trust afforded. 

At the end of the day, tension is necessary for productivity. So make your tension come from the hope of achieving something good, instead of avoiding something bad. 

Good luck out there. 

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