People have grown tired of surprises and want to exist in a work environment that allows one to have greater clarity of thought – by eliminating the unknowns that continue to creep into our minds with each decision we make or relationship we foster. If you survey the workplace, besides the need for job security and career advancement opportunities – employees want to be a part of a workplace culture that puts a premium on delivering the truth. They desire their leaders to be proactive in sharing where the company is headed and forthright about its future. In other words, they just want transparency so they can plan and protect themselves.

• Transparency of Information is when leaders make sure that everyone else is caught up on the decisions that have been made, before they are rolled out & broadcast more widely. This is the most common form of transparency, one that most leaders use today. What leaders fail to understand is that this only provides people with transparency as a snapshot in time (right now). It gives them no information about what might change in the future, or even tomorrow.
• Transparency of Intent is when leaders not only follow transparency of information, but they also tell people about what they intend to do in the future. That means letting people know about what may or may not happen. A huge advantage to this approach is that it avoids future surprises as people are able to anticipate likely scenarios. However, this approach can also hurt leaders if the intent looks like they are flip flopping on making big decisions, or hedging on making hard decisions.
• Transparency of Thought is when leaders not only follow transparency of intent, but are also unafraid to tell people what they believe is likely to happen. This creates high trust with people because they are always mentally in sync with you. However when done naively this can also cause the most chaos (if the people feel the need to get directly involved) or destroy trust (if the people really don't like what you have to say).

• Without Transparency - We're mostly on track with the projected plan, we'll be evaluating how to ensure we keep in line with our timeline.
Gives away no real information and is likely to surprise everyone when the plan falls off-track.
• Transparency of Information - We're 3 weeks behind on the projected plan, we've set up a cross-functional Ops leadership group to evaluate our best options to accelerate the timeline.
Provides accurate information, but is still likely to surprise some people that will be impacted by the decisions made from the cross-functional group.
• Transparency of Intent - We're 3 weeks behind on the projected plan, we've set up a cross-functional Ops leadership group to evaluate our best options to accelerate the timeline. The key factors we need to evaluate are reducing scope, increasing velocity, and sales alignment on launch dates.
Provides accurate information, and gives various teams a heads up that decisions made by the cross-functional group might impact them. Will still surprise the teams if the decision impacts one team much more than the other.
• Transparency of Thought - We're 3 weeks behind on the projected plan, we've set up a cross-functional Ops leadership group to evaluate our best options to accelerate the timeline. They key factors we need to evaluate are reducing scope, increasing velocity, and sales alignment on launch dates. I believe our scope already matches customer expectations, and moving launch dates is unlikely given the marketing campaign. Our best bet is to find a way to increase velocity by bringing in other teams or work extended hours.
Provides accurate information, and specifically gives a heads up to teams that are most likely going to be impacted by the decisions of the cross-functional group.

• Where legally liable, use Transparency of Information - let people know what you can
• Most of the time, use Transparency of Intent - where legal liability is not an issue
• With direct reports, senior leadership & close peers/partners use Transparency of Thought - make sure you think through beforehand (and get early feedback) so you aren't flip-flopping as you go