Towards more openness in business
29th October 2008 by Martin Howes
Honesty and openness build trust, and trust helps build a long-term business relationship.
Honesty is clearly the right approach. The truth and nothing but the truth.
Openness is less cut and dried. The whole truth? If the whole truth seems a step too far, how much of the truth should we be sharing?
Running a software company, I know that we will not always get everything right. Complex business software will have bugs. As long as we have a good relationship with our clients, then we feel comfortable sharing the list of bugs and suggested enhancements with them.
In the sad circumstances where we don't have a good relationship with a client, giving them the list of bugs can seem like giving them a stick to beat us with. But is this reason enough to be less open?
Being open about future business plans is another matter. Central players in the IT industry, (I'm thinking of Microsoft and Google), need other IT companies to work alongside them, so openness about future plans helps to move the industry forward. However, they still have some projects (such as Google Chrome and Windows Azure) which are kept secret during gestation.