Masterclass

Being transparent is brave.

When you go full tilt and bare everything, you expose yourself to criticism, pushback, probably further scrutiny, and who knows what else.

When I talk about transparency here, it’s usually in regards to climate action – what you plan to do in the near future, where the gaps in your strategy are, and how you’d like to close those gaps, even if you don’t quote know how yet.

It’s admitting you’re not perfect, rather than painting a perfect picture with carefully curated details.

Transparency comes in many forms, and we can always learn something – or at least take inspiration.

UK news site and paper The Guardian has spent the past couple of years investigating itself, suspecting it’s founders had links to slavery in it’s early days… which turned out to be true.

Here’s their homepage, outing themselves, from this morning:

The story is tragic, and some of the folks who did the investigating felt physically ill at the findings.

“…the evidence was inescapable: there was no doubt that the Guardian was founded with money partly derived from slavery, and the links were extensive.”

As horrible as the findings are, I believe at the very least, that this can be a priceless learning tool for orgs struggling with transparency.

If you happen to read the article in the link above, it summarises the findings of the investigations, plus offers a high-level checklist of how the Guardian plans to atone for it’s past.

I won’t go into the details (there are a lot) but their approach is commendable and very comprehensive.

If transparency is something that scares you, I encourage you to read the article.

It’s a how-to for creating positive initiatives by learning from wrongs that can never be made right – and hopefully brings a little perspective.