The role of transparency & a look behind the curtain
One of the most brought up problems with remote work is the remoteness and the inevitably resulting disconnectedness. The antidote to the feeling of disconnectedness is transparency. In a lot of cases the call for transparency is a one-way street as managers are looking for ways to make employees, particularly their contribution, more transparent to them without offering a similar effort of creating transparency reciprocally. Asking for transparency is asking for power, vice versa providing transparency is giving up power, which is hard for a lot of people, but necessary.
For most companies I could claim to offer a „secret glimpse“ behind the curtain of what’s going on within the company. Not here at Levels. A fully distributed tech company, they share their recorded weekly meetings publicly on YouTube (with a delay of one year).
These are my four main aspirations from watching Levels’ Weekly Forum:
- The level of transparency provided to the entire team on what’s going on in each area of the company.
- The tight agenda while still making room for everyone to contribute and make it personal.
- The raised stakes by recording the session even for documentation purposes only, let alone publishing it publicly.
- The amount of information exchanged in a condensed 50 minute format.
This just speaks to the format and its execution as a ritual within the company, which is the focus here. But, there is a ton more to learn from the actual content in the meeting on approaches to product development, brand partnerships, bringing on advisors, and what to share with a team. |
