A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about business leaders and professionals who use the phrase 
“And now, I’m going to be totally transparent...” The gist of the blog post was pointing out the hypocrisy and lessons learned from, and to, leaders about turning on and off transparency. In other words, leaders need to be transparent and authentic all the time and not just turn it on and off when it’s situational, or worse yet convenient.
I received some great feedback from many readers of the blog, but one in particular caught my attention:
“Rob – great blog. I shared with my team and it was the topic of a lengthy conversation at our SLT meeting on Friday. One of our SLT members asked a question I didn’t know how to respond to so I’m wondering if you have any advice or guidance. The question from [Name] was ‘Are there any implications to our strategy of being transparent based on the intensity of our competition?’ Thoughts and comments most welcome and I’m supposing this might give you a few ideas for another blog. Happy Holidays.”
Foundational Thoughts on Competition and Transparency
In thinking about the question and then applying it to years of working with executives, senior leaders, and many mid-level managers, I have a working hypothesis for discussion that:
A lack of intense competition creates an environment of disingenuous approaches to the market and an environment of more competition drives transparency.
Why and how a lack of competition creates an environment of disingenuous approaches to the market
The thinking here is that companies are more likely to have a little more “bluster” and exaggerate benefits and perhaps even overpromise solutions to customers in order to win business and establish a market presence. This is a classic archetype of innovators and disruptors. There is obviously a danger in doing this because by not being totally transparent, it sends a message throughout the internal organization that it’s okay not to be completely open which could result in a false sense of having a complete product or cutting corners in development and deployment.
The lessons learned and that should be applied from a leadership perspective is that if you find yourself in a situation where there is a lack of competition you need to go out of your way to make sure everyone in the organization is hyper transparent.
Why and how an environment of more competition forces more transparency
The thinking here is that companies in highly competitive markets have much less room for error and a lack of transparency that is caught by customers could be devastating to the business as competitors will seize on the opportunity to create competitive advantage. For example, a few years ago Samsung had a major problem on their hands because they didn’t test the batteries well enough in their new phone that was rushed to market. The batteries caught on fire and the company was not as transparent as they could have been in terms of reacting the crisis and identifying the causes.
From a strategy and leadership perspective, more competition also forces organizations to be much more focused on the value proposition to customers, who are the customers, what’s the right message to the market, and how to best execute the complete customer experience.
The lessons learned and that should be applied from a leadership perspective is that if you find yourself in a situation where there is intense competition you need to go out of your way to make sure everyone in the organization is hyper focused on transparency of the customer value proposition and delivering the complete customer experience.
Five things you can do today after reading this blog:
Leadership Execution – Be as transparent and authentic as possible with employees with clear and unambiguous messages about the strategy.
Execution – Be clear and transparent about focusing on the things that matter to getting the job done and the products/services delivered to customers.
Marketing – Be clear and have a clarity of message to customers
Sales – Focus on key relationships and have transparency be the foundation of every interaction.
Operations – Be transparent with vendors and suppliers in terms of needs and relationships to optimize the supply chain.
