Nate Riggs: Social Business Strategies; communication, social web strategies, & passion in Columbus, Ohio.

The opposite of being transparent is being opaque. Opaque can be defined as:

–adjective

1. not transparent or translucent; impenetrable to light; not allowing light to pass through.
2. not transmitting radiation, sound, heat, etc.
3. not shining or bright; dark; dull.
4. hard to understand; not clear or lucid; obscure: The problem remains opaque despite explanations.
5. dull, stupid, or unintelligent.

Obviously this definition is positioned more for science than communication, but stop and ask yourself – what are the common themes here?  Concepts like impenetrable, not transmitting, dark, hard to understand, not clear, and obscure help create an overall feeling that something is unseen.  The lens is foggy.

In Tactical Transparency, Hotlz and Havens site big company examples like Enron, WorldCom, Halliburton and even Martha Stewart as companies or managers who diluted trust and eroded confidence by hiding information and decisions from the public.  All of this of course led to legislation we now know as Sarbanes-Oxley, which was created in an attempt to keep big public companies honest and accountable.

Signs of Opaque Companies
How can you tell if your company opaque?  Here are a few potential indicators you might consider:

1. Angry Customers
   You will never be able to make every customer happy. That’s a given.  But if there is a growing trend of your customers that are unhappy with the relationship with your company, stop and ask yourself why.  Then approach management, and ask them the same question.  How they address your inquiry will tell you volumes about how they perceive those customer relationships.
2. Office Culture
   When there are unhappy customers, how does the internal culture of the company embrace them?  Are those customer issues addressed openly?  Is middle management as well as rank and file employees involved in the solution or are those customers immediately dehumanized? Is the problem with them or with ‘us’?  Do they become the punchlines in the daily office humor?
3. Mass Exodus
   If your company is not transparent to employees, they will eventually leave and find somewhere else to employ their skills.  People want to feel like they can trust the organization they choose to work with.  If employees are leaving in droves, again, stop and ask yourself why.  What is causing the social depenetration of those relationships?  Why are people jumping ship? Really.
4. Paid Visibility
   If the only time your company and/or company leaders are visible to communities you engage is the result of dollars spent on sponsorships and pushed placement, there may be a problem.  Buying visibility is OK, as long as it’s backed by organic conversations adding real value without a attached price tag.
5. Lawyers on Speed Dial
   Law firms make a good living from opaque companies.  In most cases, opaque companies have lots of things to hide from the communities around them. This is great for attorneys because it leads to a significant number of billable hours in letter writing and litigation.  (Let’s be fair here – lawyers have to make a living to feed there families just like the rest of us.)

Have you worked for an opaque company?  Have you experienced any of these indicators personally?  Are you still working there?

photo credit: lulugaia on Flickr