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Unlearning Through Radical Transparency

Unlearning Through Radical Transparency

Leadership literature is full of anecdotal learning principles for helping leaders learn and unlearn. However, the pace of change in today's world is unprecedented. More than managing the organisation, leaders need to be aware of the constantly changing business realities and model organisational strategies according to those realities. However, past successes may put blinders and hinder learning. As we were introduced to the topic of helping leaders unlearn, the idea of radical transparency comes handy in explaining why radical transparency helps foster an environment of learning.

Ray Dalio has succinctly outlined principles of work that one must keep in mind while running an organisation. According to Dalio, an organisation consists of two distinct parts: The People and The Culture. While both are equally important, in this blog I shall focus on the inter-play of culture and leadership and how the practice of radical transparency is essential for the organisations and leaders to unlearn. While Dalio goes on to propose a list of principles, the ones that I found most important for fostering an environment where unlearning can take place are A) Creating an Environment in which everyone has the right tunderstand the current context  and B) Being Radically Transparent.


 Developing an Understanding of the Current Context

Each organisation is a large complex system. By the virtue of being a system, a change in any one part of the organisation is bound to produce changes in the other parts as well. Being aware of the current context makes one aware of the defining possibilities and constraints. As one begins to see the interconnections between the various sub-systems one realizes that the system is more than the sum of it parts and hence effectiveness is not the function of one individual, team or process. Once an individual sees the organisation as a whole, it becomes easier for the individual to speak up and ask the right questions. Thus the organisation unlearns & questions old assumptions when everyone has the right to understand what makes sense and no one has the right to hold a critical opinion without speaking up.

Being Radically Transparent

The second principle for building a safe space for unlearning is to be radically transparent. To an extent people find it unsafe to unlearn and relearn for the fear of being judged to be incompetent. However, in a radically transparent organisation, people are not just transparent about the organisational information but also about their failed attempts at change. This works at two levels. First, the sharing of information helps people see clearly the need for change as they are themselves are able to process the cues from the system. Additionally, being transparent about the mistakes also helps people to learn and build effective solutions basis the past mistakes. In an organisational context, this often can take the form of rapid prototyping which involves quick changes basis feedback from testing beta versions. 


While it is easy to grasp the potential benefits of radical transparency, what is a little difficult to design is cultural interventions that build a culture of radical transparency without transparency leading to damaging inter-personal/ inter-group behaviors. This leaves me wondering how would I as a consultant facilitate in building a culture of transparency.



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