Transparency is similar to authenticity, but it goes one step further – a company openly communicates what it does and how it does it. 

There are some flaws in this argument (I’m finishing up a seminar about competition and copying). Copying may be the easy way to get a program implemented, but there are a lot of problems with that approach, especially if you are copying a program from a company that has a very different corporate culture than your own. 

 

Zappos is completely transparent – they constantly share how they work (see the video at the top of the page). Even though they are highly successful, not many companies have adopted what they do. They are truly unique.

 

 

During the 4-hour meeting, Hsieh talked about how Zappos’ traditional organizational structure is being replaced with Holacracy, a radical “self-governing” operating system where there are no job titles and no managers. The term Holacracy is derived from the Greek word holon, which means a whole that’s part of a greater whole. Instead of a top-down hierarchy, there’s a flatter “holarchy” that distributes power more evenly. The company will be made up of different circles—there will be around 400 circles at Zappos once the rollout is complete in December 2014—and employees can have any number of roles within those circles. This way, there’s no hiding under titles; radical transparency is the goal.

Hsieh told the crowd on that rainy November afternoon, “Darwin said that it’s not the fastest or strongest that survive. It’s the ones most adaptive to change.”

“We’re classically trained to think of ‘work’ in the traditional paradigm,” says John Bunch, who, along with Alexis Gonzales-Black, is leading the transition to Holacracy at Zappos. “One of the core principles is people taking personal accountability for their work. It’s not leaderless. There are certainly people who hold a bigger scope of purpose for the organization than others. What it does do is distribute leadership into each role. Everybody is expected to lead and be an entrepreneur in their own roles, and Holacracy empowers them to do so.”

In its highest-functioning form, he says, the system is “politics-free, quickly evolving to define and operate the purpose of the organization, responding to market and real-world conditions in real time. It’s creating a structure in which people have flexibility to pursue what they’re passionate about.”

 

–Aimee Groth, Zappos is going holacratic: no job titles, no managers, no hierarchy, Quartz

Not only is the internal structure being more transparent, they are communicating this change to the world. Wonderful transparency.

 

Virgin America is also transparent with their customer. Their upgrade policies were revolutionary, especially because there were no secrets about how to score a first class seat 6 hours before a flight. Now, a number of other airlines have similar offers. It's a great way to not let first class seats go empty – and fill up the plane.

 

They are also transparent about how they save energy. 

 

 

My computer was old and dying, I knew it, but I wasn’t ready for a new one yet. One day, I let the battery run out and it just died. It wouldn't turn on. I went to get a new battery, and it still wouldn’t work. I called Apple Care and they didn’t want to tell me the bad news that most likely my logic board was fried, so they tried to get me an appointment at an Apple store. However, this was my work computer - so I needed a solution right away. The Genius Bars near my home were booked solid for 3 days, so the call center recommended that I go to a reseller to get faster service. I didn't know that resellers still existed with the Genius Bar concept – but I was thrilled! I found a reseller who specializes in small businesses and can give me better service and help than going to Apple itself. Now I have someone to call if there is a problem.

 

By being transparent about how I could get the best solution rather than looking for a sale for Apple itself, Apple made a better deal – they introduced me to a solution I needed more than an Apple Genius bar desk. 

 

 

Another sign of transparency is to do an experiment how easily a company can be contacted. Companies that have their phone numbers and online chat easy to find means they want to talk to you and they are concerned with their customers. Companies that hide their contact information in some ways, don't want customers to contact them. They would rather that customers research their own answers to questions than help them.

 

Zappos (see the header – many ways to contact Zappos at the top of the page), Virgin America and Apple all have extensive Contact Us pages. It's wonderful how open they are to help customers solve their problems.