As 2.0 conversations continue, the topic of transparency has become a key area of focus. Harvard Business Press even suggests that transparency can be leveraged strategically. While many look to leverage transparency outside the organization, there is great benefit to be gained through increased transparency in leadership, internally.

Along with transparency, there is a need to increase a commitment to being more explicit, by uncovering the ‘unwritten’ rules and cultural mores and holding them up for observation, consideration and criticism. Hidden ‘rules’ and ‘agendas’ decrease the productivity of a company in endless subtle ways. It diminishes the critical trust factor within a culture. It creates a culture of protectionism — it encourages scarcity behaviors. Scarcity behaviors influence and are embraced by daily work efforts.In scarcity cultures, few are willing to state the obvious. Denial is the norm.

Even in more enlightened culture, often the obvious just isn’t so obvious to everyone, because it hasn’t been made explicit. Making ‘the obvious’ more explicit can add tremendous value. Unfortunately the mechanisms of choice for making a business ‘explicit’ are the typical tools most readily available to employees — a suite of office products (e.g. Word, PowerPoint, Excel). The tools are not necessarily the problem, the way in which they are employed is.

In making the work of a business more explicit, placeholders are important. A brand is one form of a placeholder. A brand is a shorthand. It’s an artifact that can elicit a variety of visions, thoughts and emotions. It can offer a simple synthesis of a much deeper collection of detail.

While a vast collection of information might be shorthanded by a tagcloud, there are design elements/features that can enhance a representation to elicit greater awareness or understanding — the typical tagcloud provides only minimal distinction. To illustrate this further, the functions offered at Wordle.net quickly deliver a wonderful branded shorthand of any set of del.icio.us links, or collection of terms. The visual image can serve as personal inspiration, a personal brand.

Even at the highest levels, businesses often lack visionary placeholders. While there are often supposedly well-crafted strategies and goals, across decades and across companies, I can’t recall a single line from any company strategy or goal I’ve ever been exposed to. I can remember more about what was ‘insincere’ about such statements — they never matched the reality we faced. If the artifacts were intended to represent a desired future state, I never witnessed the anticipated change ever occur.

Three-to-five-year animated movie projects use storyboards as placeholders. If we’d had a storyboard to frame the goals of the company and/or our path forward, I’d probably still have a copy of it. Indeed, I can recall most of the cartoons we hung in the halls outside of our cubes. Those were our makeshift artifacts of reality. They branded our beliefs. We have an inherent need for such artifacts. Where they are lacking formally, they show up in informal ways.

Businesses need more artifacts. In various business situations, I’ve watched as people have talked…and talked…and talked about issues and topics. Hours and days, wasted talking in circles about the same thing and not making any progress. It was all I could do to refrain from jumping up and interjecting myself into their efforts to help them. They needed the tools and the means to capture and look at their thoughts in a form other than simple discussion. Somehow, putting something down on paper changes the commitment to thought, but not just though words (e.g. minutes from a meeting, or endless documents). People more readily engage when they can ’see’ something. Artifacts are helpful because they:

• Provide a different way to represent what has been discussed. Often, when illustrated it becomes more clear that while the words might have been the same, the intent and meanings were not. A visual representation provides a way to further and deepen a common understanding.
• Serve as a placeholder for the last set of agreements. Things evolve. As understandings deepen and people have more time to thing about something, they uncover ways to make something better. A visual representation (which can/should include text), is a far more inspirational place to restart a conversation than a list of ‘minutes’. Notes or minutes should be relegated to actions or parking lot items (things important but perhaps not immediately relevant).
• Focus and Inspire. Sometimes the simple reminders of the basics are all that’s needed to gain focus and inspire effort to engage in additional work.
• Simplify and synthesize. A detailed document or an endless list can be overwhelming. While the details can be important, they can also add very little meaning. Sometimes a synthesized view is needed to provide the context to suggest the importance of the detail.

I’ve participated in a very compelling Structured Visual Thinking method, led by the talented efforts of John Caswell. Very dense with content, the artifacts can be overwhelming. But for those who have participated in the process, or have been walked through the story, the visuals effectively ‘brand’ the effort.

At a recent conference, the very talented Nancy White captured the key speaker messages in her own unique visual collections.

Businesses need to find new ways to make their reality explicit, so that everyone can look at it and discuss whether or not they agree with that reality and/or if they think the reality can or should remain the same.

If you move forward, but don’t know where you are, you can end up anywhere and nowhere all at the same time, but it’s not likely that you’ll end up where you really want to be.