There’s been a lot of discussion about NetGen, or the Millinials, but to me, the defining characteristic of today’s generation is transparency. Kids are growing up in an environment where everything they do and say is shared with broad audiences, and where digital archives are an accepted part of life. People in their 20s and 30s have spent the majority of their work lives in a digital world, where easy replication of once sensitive information is commonplace. Perspectives on what is private and what is OK to share are changing rapidly.
Transparency has some wonderful results – once taboo sujects like abuse, rape, hazing, government overreach, and workplace dangers are brought out of the shadows and into the national conversation, helping survivors to heal and assisting in the prevention of such behaviors going forward. In the workplace, sharing ideas, solutions, and having broader, more open conversations help drive creative solutions. Collaboration requires transparency and authenticity to be successful, and learning to work in a transparent world is a critical skill.
But transparency also introduces new problems for society to understand and address. Intrusions on privacy, protecting corporate practices and intellectual property, and respecting individual boundaries are all areas that start to shift when transparency is more accepted. What is private, the perceived need to protect, the value of sharing, and where exactly individual boundaries lie are all changing, and management approaches, policies, and social contracts need to keep up.
If your workplace isn’t thinking about the impact of changing social mores around transparency, now is the time to start. Try these three questions to get the conversation going, and see what happens then. Keep in mind that assumptions are usually driven by people with more tenure, and may be hard to surface if you don’t really dig deep.
- What are current assumptions about what is confidential and what isn’t?
- Are those assumptions really reflecting current behaviors and common understanding?
- If not, do you need to update the assumptions or address the behaviors?