The objections section feels pretty strawmanny here.
1. It empowers your enemies
True. But it empowers your friends as well. Truth is an asymmetric weapon; if what you are working on is good, you will have more friends than enemies.
In the linked essay, truth is called “assymetric weapon” in the context of a logical debate. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the world doesn’t form opinions based on logical debate. Storytelling and rhetoric prevail, especially in the short term.
For storytelling, truth (or rather data) is also asymmetric but in the exact opposite way. The more you share (especially of “raw” internal comms), the easier it is to cherrypick parts that make you look bad.
Debunking misleading claims takes significantly more effort than making those claims in the first place. Just take a look at the rise of alt-right or anti-vaccine movement.
The objections you stated as 2, 4 and 5 are logically flowing from this:
(Objection 1) Your enemies can use your transparency against you -> (4) this can damage the reputation of the org and anyone who works with it → a mix of two outcomes happens:
(2) The org accepts the risk, this can sometimes result in materially bad outcomes (e.g. withdrawn funding or another org refusing to collaborate due to perceived hazard)
(5) The org (and the people in it) tries to mitigate the risk by investing more time to craft communication in a way that is less prone to be misused
I think that especially the last point is severely underestimated by calls for radical transparency. To be efficient, internal comms hugely rely on shared context, mutual good faith and short loop for asking clarifying questions. External comms have none of those benefits so crafting them takes significantly more effort—one needs to explain the context, pre-empt questions and account for the possible bad faith interpretations.
The objections section feels pretty strawmanny here.
In the linked essay, truth is called “assymetric weapon” in the context of a logical debate. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the world doesn’t form opinions based on logical debate. Storytelling and rhetoric prevail, especially in the short term.
For storytelling, truth (or rather data) is also asymmetric but in the exact opposite way. The more you share (especially of “raw” internal comms), the easier it is to cherrypick parts that make you look bad.
Debunking misleading claims takes significantly more effort than making those claims in the first place. Just take a look at the rise of alt-right or anti-vaccine movement.
The objections you stated as 2, 4 and 5 are logically flowing from this:
(Objection 1) Your enemies can use your transparency against you ->
(4) this can damage the reputation of the org and anyone who works with it → a mix of two outcomes happens:
(2) The org accepts the risk, this can sometimes result in materially bad outcomes (e.g. withdrawn funding or another org refusing to collaborate due to perceived hazard)
(5) The org (and the people in it) tries to mitigate the risk by investing more time to craft communication in a way that is less prone to be misused
I think that especially the last point is severely underestimated by calls for radical transparency. To be efficient, internal comms hugely rely on shared context, mutual good faith and short loop for asking clarifying questions. External comms have none of those benefits so crafting them takes significantly more effort—one needs to explain the context, pre-empt questions and account for the possible bad faith interpretations.