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shorbaji 23 minutes ago | link | parent [dead] | on: Ridiculously Transparent
The debate of more vs. less transparency is not trivial. Regulatory and competitive considerations make this difficult. Sometimes it is simply human nature to be secretive - particularly when it comes to bad news.
The article focuses on transparency between management and employees. Transparency with customers and with the public is at least equally interesting.
A company can benefit from transparency. Heroku, for example, are transparent with their downtime (e.g. status.heroku.com). Another example is the case of AirBnB and the EJ debacle. Once AirBnB openly acknowledged that safety/security is a concern for landlords it adapted by rolling out an improved product (guarantees, safety features, etc).
Both of these are great examples of transparency at the core impacting the product and how it is marketed. These products are more valuable and more competitive because of transparency. Certainly this adds to revenues and likely the bottom line as well.
AirBnB could have adopted this approach earlier. So, the lack of transparency can be missed opportunity.
AirBnB's entire business depends on non-transparency - you can't get the other person's phone number ahead of the transaction. And they've put in more workarounds to get around the problems that forced secrecy creates.
True. As a broker of sorts, it is essential that AirBnB withhold details of the two parties. But the company need not hide that they do so. The certainly would not be ashamed if news broke out that they do so.
The transparency I speak about is slightly different. AirBnB where (I think) caught out when news broke of a landlord's home was vandalized. The company was heavily criticized for an arguably insufficiently transparent initial response.
Eventually, AirBnB were transparent in the sense that they acknowledged mistakes and acknowledged inherent risks to landlords. They used that transparency to improve the offering and promote the product accordingly. Kudos to Chesky and team!
At the risk of repeating myself, I see a parallel with Heroku's status dashboard. In a sense they are saying: "We won't mislead you. Hosting with us carries risk of downtime. Here is a dashboard so you see how well (or bad) we are doing." That too is an example of transparency leading to an improved service offering.
Heroku seem to have done it proactively. AirBnB did so reactively. Better late, of course, than never.
shorbaji 23 minutes ago | link | parent [dead] | on: Ridiculously Transparent
The debate of more vs. less transparency is not trivial. Regulatory and competitive considerations make this difficult. Sometimes it is simply human nature to be secretive - particularly when it comes to bad news.
The article focuses on transparency between management and employees. Transparency with customers and with the public is at least equally interesting.
A company can benefit from transparency. Heroku, for example, are transparent with their downtime (e.g. status.heroku.com). Another example is the case of AirBnB and the EJ debacle. Once AirBnB openly acknowledged that safety/security is a concern for landlords it adapted by rolling out an improved product (guarantees, safety features, etc).
Both of these are great examples of transparency at the core impacting the product and how it is marketed. These products are more valuable and more competitive because of transparency. Certainly this adds to revenues and likely the bottom line as well.
AirBnB could have adopted this approach earlier. So, the lack of transparency can be missed opportunity.