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What does Transparency mean to me?

By Nick Hodge | September 7, 2009

I mulled long and hard over the con­tent of this post over on techedbackstage.net. A dis­cus­sion with a few people, and read­ing to through with Jorke cleared my mind a little.

Should I reveal we had a medium size hic­cup in the first day of net­book handout at TechEd? C’mon, cor­por­a­tions don’t make errors. Well, they sorta do — but never admit it. Prob­lems are couched in cor­por­ate speak. All is well. Look over here.

My per­sonal concept of trans­par­ency and hon­esty is telling it like it is. Whilst I don’t state the actual num­ber of machines need­ing re-imaging: we have yet to get more data tomor­row to be more fac­tual: telling the story as it is, warts and all, is crit­ical. It’s closer to home here as I am respons­ible for the Net­books. In ret­ro­spect, I feel I should have thought of the human factors when in production-line mode. Also, increas­ing the Q&A rate con­sid­er­ing the tight­ness of the handout: I should have thought of that, too.

I’d like to put a big thanks out to Jorke who imple­men­ted techedbackstage.net. We really hope that you guys in IT get some­thing out of this transparency.

Some­times it’s pain­ful to admit your mis­takes and say sorry. Thank­fully, I work in an organ­isa­tion that respects the need for this level of hon­esty. And a great team of people who are pulling to make it right for customers.

Topics: auteched | 3 Comments »

3 Responses to “What does Transparency mean to me?”

  1. DamianM Says:
    September 7th, 2009 at 10:57 pm

    Good post Nick, both here and at techedbackstage.

    Shit hap­pens when you do stuff like this, I wouldn’t even say any­one in par­tic­u­lar stuffed up.

    I think you’re hand­ling it the right way, most people will under­stand, sure you’ll get a few unhappy campers but those people will find a way to be upset no mat­ter what.

  2. Luke Says:
    September 7th, 2009 at 11:04 pm

    Nice post. Warts and all is crit­ical. The world has evolved :-)

  3. Fraser Crozier Says:
    November 9th, 2009 at 2:07 pm

    Fraser is won­der­ing where Nick is…has been a very long time in blo­g­time since we’ve heard from you old chap…hope this finds you well.

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