Beyond the Numbers: The Missing Layers of Transparency and Open Book Management

The First Rule of Transparency: It Doesn’t Save You. It Shows You.

Open-book management has been around a long time. It’s one of those ideas that’s deceptively simple—so simple, it risks becoming a check-the-box management tactic.

But in reality? It’s one of the most dynamic, high-impact leadership practices out there. It’s also messy. It challenges power dynamics, reveals weak systems, and forces you to decide if you actually trust your people or just say you do.

Let’s start with what transparency often looks like in the wild:

Transparency-as-Optics:

In a low-transparency culture, managers share what’s convenient—usually the good news. The tough stuff? That stays behind closed doors.

And when information is shared, it’s not really to empower.
It’s to create in-groups: “I’m in the know.”

The result?

Teams compete for access. Distrust spreads. And decisions get politicized, not operationalized.

Transparency-as-Silos:

Even in well-meaning companies, one manager might share just enough to help their team function. Great.

But across the hall, another manager is actually walking people through how decisions are made, what’s driving them, and what’s coming next.

So one team is heads down, chasing deadlines.
The other is preparing for what’s 6–18 months away.

Both might be doing their jobs—but only one is developing business literacy. And in an employee-owned firm, that matters even more. Because when some employees are treated like owners and others like task-doers, you’ve created a caste system—whether you meant to or not.

The Bottom Line:

Everyone loves to talk about alignment and engagement. But if you haven’t defined what transparency actually means in your company—if you don’t have a shared model for it—then you’re leaking value and squandering trust.

The First Rule of Transparency: It Doesn’t Save You. It Shows You.

The Second Rule of Transparency: There is no transparency, there is leadership.

If your company has trust problems, transparency won’t fix it. It’ll light it up like a crime scene under blacklight.

If your company has trust? Transparency becomes rocket fuel.

But either way: transparency is not a strategy. It’s a mirror.

The 4 C’s: A Real-World Framework for Making Transparency Work

In any meaningful managerial program—strategy, initiative, or planning—these are the four elements I believe have to be in place:

1) Concept — What You’re Really Saying When You Say “Why”

Mission statements are easy. Tradeoffs are hard.

Your job isn’t just to tell people what you’re doing—it’s to walk them through why this path was chosen over the other ones.

Even more importantly, why didn’t you pick the others? Eg. “We had three roads. Here’s why we didn’t take the other two.”

If you don’t do that? Transparency just becomes noise. Or worse—spin.

2) Conditions — Can Your Culture Handle the Truth?

You can’t ask people to engage with the truth if they get punished for reacting to it.

Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory is still relevant here. He separated the basics (hygiene factors) from true motivators. Without organizational hygiene—clarity, fairness, consistency—engagement doesn’t take root.

Forget vision.
Forget “wisdom of the crowd.”
You’ll be lucky if people just show up.

But “safety” isn’t the right word anymore. It’s been politicized. What you really need is capacity—the capacity to hold tension without blowing up. Your company needs structural maturity where the adult ego state is the dominant attitude of the culture.

People stop talking when it’s not worth it.

People don’t need to feel comfortable. They need to feel like this place can handle hard things.

Otherwise, transparency backfires:

• You share financials—but no one trusts the numbers.

• You ask for input—but nobody believes you’ll use it.

• You explain the strategy—but your team’s too burned out to care.

That’s not safety. That’s fragility.

Transparency without hygiene is just a leak.

3) Constructs — You Need More Than Bullet Points

Transparency isn’t about dumping information. It’s about helping people make meaning. And people don’t make meaning from charts and spreadsheets. They need patterns, frameworks (constructs), and stories that show them what matters.

If your “strategy” is a 30-slide deck that only gets mentioned at QBRs, it’s not strategy. It’s just furniture.

Here’s where most orgs go sideways:

They confuse:

• Strategy – What makes us distinct? What is our deliberate edge? And, what are we going to do to build new markets or outcompete in our existing market?

• Plans – What are we actually doing to move toward that distinction?

• Wish Lists – The ideas that sound good but haven’t been pressure-tested or resourced.

Wish lists feel energizing. They give hope. But without discipline, they’re just mirages—and they can be dangerous.

As Jim Collins put it: You must confront the brutal facts.

A wish list without reality is a fantasy.
A plan without distinction is just busywork.
A strategy that no one can see or act on? That’s branding, not leadership.

When you don’t separate these?

• People chase the wrong goals.

• They confuse brainstorming with decision-making.

• They think the wish list is the plan, and they feel like they’re always behind, or they are let down when things don’t come to fruition.

If everything is a priority, nothing is a strategy.

Want to make transparency work?

Then give people constructs they can hold in their heads:

• Models that explain how decisions are made.

• Frameworks that show where you are—and what comes next.

• Visuals that create clarity, not confusion.

Because real strategy is repeatable. If someone on the front line can’t retell it at lunch, it’s too complicated. Or worse—it’s meaningless.

4) Cohesion — Say It So Many Times You’re Sick of It

The first time you say something, they don’t hear it.
The second time, they doubt it.
The third time, they start to believe it.

Don’t communicate once and call it done. If you’re not sick of hearing yourself say it, your team hasn’t heard it enough.

Strategy isn’t only what’s written. It’s what gets repeated. Business literacy won’t come into being until people can put what they hear into their own words.

And now the part that few people talk about:

Most people think transparency = financials.
“We opened the books!” they say, patting themselves on the back.

But Open Book Leadership™? It’s not just about showing the scoreboard. It’s about teaching the business of running the business.

The real transparency spectrum has three layers:

1. Financials – What numbers are visible? And are people literate enough to use them?

2. Mindset – How does leadership think? What do they value? What are they afraid of?

3. Decision-Making – Who makes the call? Based on what? And how do we know?

You want alignment?
Show people how to think, not just what to look at.