When a process is confusing to me and I am not sure why then I pause. Confusion encourages me to back away because I don’t understand it. Transparency alone is that way. Too much of the wrong information and I cannot tell where to apply my energy. Everything is at the same level of visibility.
How about appropriate visibility so that I know where to apply effort?
- Where do I apply energy?
- When do I apply energy?
- How should I engage?
How about appropriate transparency so that I know which decisions to consider?
- What am I looking at?
- Should I dig in?
- Does this tell me anything?
Please don’t pummel me with a ton of info (an open dump of transparency). I should be able to expose details on demand and find detail when I want it. Details should be well summarized so that I know when and if to dig in.
If people are engaging in the wrong way it is because we have emphasized the visibility wrong and not found balance with transparency. Transperency is not an end all answer but actually has an twin in visibility. Balanced both then the whole process is natural and obvious. So maybe these rules would help and maybe a better way to think about process would help more.
Rule: Make it visible.
This reminds me that self-organization will occur when we get the visibility right.
Rule: Keep it transparent.
This reminds me to help with informed decision making so that people feel comfortable with the data they receive to make choices.
Also, we need time to learn if the game keeps changing our learning has not stabilized. Changing fast&often is not learning it is just frenetic. We have to consider learning as a community not an individual which means we need to look for a critical mass of understanding (Do not have evidence of that?).
In either case engagement is informative, it should not be mandatory. Positive or negative feedback is useful since in either case we are learning and can use that to emerge a balanced process.