Transparency + Clarity: Information Dumps Don't Work

Lately, we hear a great deal about the value of radical transparency.  Consultants argue that leaders need to share information broadly with members of their organization.  They argue that radical transparency builds buy-in, trust, and commitment.  Sounds sensible, right?  Is there a downside though?  What risks does this approach create?

Martin Gutmann and Antoni Lacinai examine this issue in a new Fast Company article.  They contend that transparency only works when coupled with clarity.  They write:

Transparency in a company setting typically means more dashboards, more all-hands, and more context. It feels responsible—especially in uncertain moments—because it signals you aren’t hiding anything.  But facts don’t organize themselves. People still have to decide what matters, what they need to ignore, and what to do next. When leaders don’t provide that structure, they leave teams confused, and teams will fill in the blanks with rumor and gossip. In the end, this leads to more insecurity and more internal politics.

Gutmann and Lacinai argue that leaders need to explain why information is important, and then they must provide clear direction to their team members.  They have be wary of creating cognitive overload and overwhelming their employees with information.  People need to know what the priorities are and how to interpret key data.  

For me, any attempt to add clarity begins with leaders stepping into their employees' shoes.  They need to try to see things from their team members' perspectives.  How will they interpret information?  What might confuse them?  How might they be unsettled by certain data?  Stepping into their shoes will help leaders frame their messages, anticipate challenges, and develop strategies for reducing stress and anxiety among workers.  

NASA Issues Investigative Report About Starliner Failure

Twenty-three years ago, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board issued its comprehensive report on the 2003 Space Shuttle Accident.  My colleagues Amy Edmondson, Richard Bohmer, and I began an intensive research project about the tragedy, and we published a case study, book chapter, and Harvard Business Review article with our analysis.  We argued that the failed mission demonstrated how and why organizations and their leaders actively downplay ambiguous threats at times.  We examined how the culture and team dynamics made it difficult for technical experts to express dissenting views and share bad news.  

Sadly, it seems that many of these same challenges led to the problems on the 2024 Starliner mission which left astronauts stranded on the space station for approximately nine months.  Yesterday, NASA issued its investigative report on the Starliner failure.   Here is the excerpt from the report that caught my attention: 

A posture of risk acceptance was communicated by CCP (NASA's Commercial Crew Program) and Boeing leadership, creating division within the large working/joint team and eroded trust. During the mission, CCP and Boeing operational leadership consistently conveyed a position of risk acceptance and readiness to undock, which many perceived as premature and dismissive of unresolved technical concerns. This was particularly apparent regarding the Service Module RCS 138thruster anomalies. This posture gave the impression that completing the sortie mission was prioritized over a thorough assessment of crew safety risks.  

One interviewee noted, “People said, ‘Why bother? He’s driving in one direction and that’s what he wants.’”   

Some interviewees also mentioned the shuttle operational background of the SMMT Chair, NOM, and CCP PM, and the possible preconceived notion that accepting risk to return the vehicle and crew was the only real path forward. This mirrors decisions made for the shuttle when no safe haven in LEO or alternative return capability was available. 

This forward leaning approach led to a breakdown in open dialogue. NASA institutional stakeholders, including ISSP, FOD, and Technical Authorities, felt their input was undervalued or ignored, requiring governance intervention to ensure additional data analysis occurred before a final crew return decision. The perception that CCP leadership had formed a position before hearing all viewpoints created organizational silence, resistance to collaboration, and stagnation in decision making. 

Strong personalities within CCP and Boeing were seen as overly optimistic in presenting data, which some interviewees interpreted as lobbying rather than objective analysis. This dynamic discouraged dissenting views and contributed to a growing sense of distrust. As one interviewee described, opposing positions felt like “pushing a rock uphill.” 

The situation improved later in the mission when key personnel changes were made within the Boeing team and there was collective recognition that senior leadership should have played a more active role in facilitating respectful engagement across differing perspectives. These changes allowed for more productive conversations regarding the technical qualification campaign of the hardware and testing at the WSTF. The lack of early intervention to address team dysfunction allowed conflict to overshadow mission objectives and delayed consensus on critical decisions. 

Organizational silence, discouraging of dissenting views, dismissed technical concerns, overly optimistic analysis... the pattern is clear.  Once again, we see ample evidence that leadership did not create a culture in which open and candid dialogue could occur about ambiguous risks.  I'm glad to see a careful after-action review taking place here, with transparency about the organizational problems that have been identified (rather than only focusing on the technical problems).  Having said that, now the challenge is clear: can NASA turn these lessons into action and fundamentally change the way future programs are led?  

Overestimating What We Know: The Trap of Effortless Search

You would like to learn about a particular topic.  You have two options.  You can search online for information, which AI tools and search engines summarize quickly for you.  Alternatively, you could dig deeper, read an article or two, listen to a podcast, and... maybe even read a book on the subject!  How much do we rely on the easy route to knowledge, and how confident are we that we have become highly knowledgeable through our rapid search for information?

In her amazing book, Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure, author and journalist Maggie Jackson explores this topic.  She writes:

After even a brief online search, information seekers tend to think they know more than they actually do, according to a decade of studies. In one set of five experiments, people were asked to study weighty topics, such as autism or inflation, before taking a quiz on the subject. Half the participants were told to find an online article on the topic, while others were simply given the same information without having to search for it.  People who searched online were far more overconfident going into the quiz.  In one round, they predicted that, on average, they would get two-thirds of the questions right, although they scored less than 50%. 

In contrast, people who had been given the information studied longer, absorbed more, and got about 60% of the questions right - about what they had expected.  Rarely if ever in life are just handed information. Searching and seeking are the human condition. But how we do so matters.  In the virtual realm, we seem to lose the ability to sense that we don't know, the starting point of discernment.  This false confidence blossoms even when people learn nothing from an online search, further studies show. By assuming we can know effortlessly, we close our eyes to our failings and so to chances to explore.  We run from the work of fully attuning to the here and now, finding in hubris a retreat from the challenges of facing up to reality as potent as that of outcome-oriented fear. 

This research suggests that we need to proceed with caution when we jump to conclusions based on a breezy online search or quick prompt on an AI tool such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude.   Ask yourself: What do I actually know?  How deep and accurate is my knowledge?  Should I be making critical decisions based on this superficial knowledge?

Careful How You Handle Familiar Faces on Your Team

When you take on a new role, do you like adding some familiar faces to your team?  It seems logical.  We want to surround ourselves with a few people we trust and can depend on when we move into a new position.   We hope that having some trusted lieutenants on the team will lead to faster, more impactful action. We may encounter some key risks, though, when we build our team in this fashion.  Morag Barrett, a leadership development expert, has written a terrific article for Fast Company about how leaders should (and should not) build their teams.  

Barrett argues that inner and outer circles may form on the team.  In academic terms, we describe this type of situation as a "fault line" between subgroups, and that type of fracture can harm team performance a great deal.  Barrett writes, "Leaders who 'go way back' share shorthand, context, and trust earned elsewhere. Others, often equally capable with deep institutional knowledge, find themselves outside that orbit."  

She goes on to give an example of one CEO with whom she worked.  She writes, "I coached a CEO who’d brought three former colleagues into a 10-person executive team. Within months, critical decisions were being pre-discussed among “The Four” before formal meetings. The other six leaders became increasingly passive, not because they lacked capability, but because challenging pre-baked decisions felt politically risky."  

I've seen this type of situation as well.  If team members outside the inner circle feel as though decisions are being presented at staff meetings as a fait accompli, then buy-in and commitment will decline precipitously.  Motivation and decision implementation will suffer.  We can bring trusted colleagues onto our team, but we need to work hard to integrate these members with the others in the group.  We can't let people feel as though there is a huge status gap between two subgroups.   

What Happens When We Can Quantify Some Aspects of a Decision But Not Others?

Do we make biased decisions because we are obsessed with quantifying our decision analysis? Linda Chang, Erika Kirgios, Sendil Mullainathan, and Katherine Milkman have published an interesting new study titled, "Does counting change what counts? Quantification fixation biases decision-making."  They asked the question: "Do people decide differently when some dimensions of a choice are quantified and others are not?"

The scholars conducted a series of experiments.  Each decision that the research subjects encountered involved some tradeoffs.  Some dimensions of the tradeoffs were described quantitatively and others qualitatively.  The results of the experiments demonstrated that people tended to prefer the alternatives about which numerical data was offered, rather than qualitative information.  Thea authors explain that, "This 'quantification fixation' is driven by the perception that numbers are easier to use for comparative decision-making."  

The scholars argue that we face many decisions in business and in life in which some dimensions of the tradeoffs can be quantified, but others simply cannot.  The qualitative information may be rich and useful though.  The numbers may tell only a portion of the story.  Think about a manager facing a decision about a brand extension.  Numbers may be readily available demonstrating the potential for sales growth, market share increases, and profitability enhancement.  On the other hand, the risks around brand dilution may be more readily described in qualitative fashion.  Do managers pay less attention those very real brand dilution risks simply because they can't easily produce numbers about how dilution may arise and impact the business?

The scholars conclude, "Those who structure decision contexts ignore quantification fixation at their peril. As quantification becomes increasingly prevalent, people may be pulled away from valuable qualitative information toward potentially less diagnostic numeric information."

How Good is the Second Act for a Leader?

Last week, I examined Mike Vrabel's path to the Super Bowl as a head coach in the National Football League.  I noted that 33% of Super Bowl winning head coaches had achieved their championship after failing to win a title with their first team.  The data suggest that a coach's second act can be more successful than the first, perhaps because leadership is a learned capability.   All-time great coaches such as Andy Reid, Bill Belichick, Mike Shanahan, and Don Shula all seemed to have learned from their successes and failures during their first tenure as a head coach.  

Today, I decided to examine whether this phenomenon was unique to the NFL.  Does the same pattern apply in the other major sports in the United States?   The table below shows the data for the past 50 years in each of the four major sports leagues.  As it turns out, the NFL is not unique.  In fact, the other sports show an even more dramatic positive effect for coaches in their second (or later) act!  In Major League  Baseball and the National Hockey League, more than 60% of championship coaches in the past 50 years did not win during their first tenure as a head coach.  All-time great hockey coaches and baseball managers in this group include Scotty Bowman, Al Arbour, Joe Torre, Dusty Baker, Terry Francona, and Tony LaRussa.   

By the way, during my original analysis of the NFL, I also noted that the sport's championship coaches demonstrated that the curse of expertise is very real.  The curse of expertise means that people with specialized knowledge who have achieved remarkable success often struggle to teach others, because they cannot easily put themselves into the shoes of someone for whom results do not come as easily.  In the NFL, only one Super Bowl winning head coach earned entry into the Hall of Fame as a player.  Is the curse of expertise also evident in the other sports?  Indeed!  Few Hall of Famers won championships in the last 50 years as a head coach: NFL (1), MLB (1), NHL (2), and NBA (4).  

Interestingly, second act success stories seem quite rare in business.  Most CEOs seem to achieve their most prominent success during their first tenure as a leader.  A few people stand out as having more successful second acts.  These include Reed Hastings, Eric Schmidt, and Stewart Butterfield.  The question that I'm not sure I can answer is:  Why are there more highly successful second acts in sports than in business?  Perhaps companies simply don't give many people that opportunity for a second chance if they have struggled during their first tenure as a chief executive.  Others would argue that talent matters more than coaching in sports, and that coaches win championships when they find the right fit between awesome talent and their good leadership skills.  Perhaps we simply attribute too much of a company's success or failure to the CEO, and therefore, we do not see through the struggles of a firm to identify the strong leadership capabilities of its top executive.  

Training Your Team Members Boosts Your Productivity

How much does your company invest in training and development for your employees?   Is the ROI positive?  Many executives scrutinize training and development programs closely.  They want to know if the payoff justifies the investment.  Typically, people measure ROI by examining the impact on the employees undergoing the training.  We ask questions such as: Are they more productive?  Are they more engaged? Do they stay at the firm longer?  

A new study examines another potentially important impact of training and development programs.  Miguel Espinosa and Christopher T. Stanton studied 526 frontline workers and 129 managers in Columbia who had undergone a 120-hour, 16-week training program.  According to HBS Working Knowledge, the scholars concluded:

"Goal achievement among frontline workers increased by roughly 10% after training.  Managers completed 3% more of their goals related to strategic tasks.  Supervisors who worked most closely with trained workers benefited the most, boosting productivity by about 8%.  An examination of email data explains why: After the training, frontline workers sent fewer emails to their managers—an indication that the training had given them the knowledge and confidence to pursue their work independently.  Trained employees enjoyed additional benefits, including career stability and growth. For example, they were more likely than their non-trained counterparts to remain with the organization over the next three years. And they were about twice as likely as their untrained counterparts to receive promotions."

Now this study examined frontline workers.  Other research should examine development programs for employees at higher levels of the organization to examine the productivity benefits.  Perhaps the benefits will not be as widespread.  However, this study certainly provides food for thought.  Executives may be looking at ROI all wrong when it comes to leadership development programs at all levels.