Interpretive Considerations and Responsible Use
1. Transparency is not unconditional disclosure
Organisations should honestly announce the important and influential facts, but protecting personal information, confidential data, safety and security can create legitimate limits. The right question is whether the organisation is honest about the important facts and whether it justifiably explains the limits on non-disclosure.
2. Flood the Zone is not information bombardment
In this book the title of the second chapter sits within the context of communication and transparency. A similar phrase in other usages may point to different strategies. The volume of messages alone is not an indicator of transparency; relevance, accuracy, checkability and answering questions matter.
3. Getting ahead is not speed without verification
For early communication, verified data, preliminary data, hypotheses and the unknown must be kept apart. Saying “we don’t know yet”, if it is true and accompanied by an explanation of the next step, is more responsible than false certainty.
4. Managing perception must not take the place of fixing reality
The right order is: know the reality; fix or reduce the problem; state responsibility and impact; document the corrective action; keep updating.
5. Evaluate communication with the right measure
News coverage and the number of views are output indicators; they do not necessarily show that the audience understood the message or that their trust and behaviour changed. The measure has to be derived from the communication goal.