How many times have you been involved in a project where getting information about status or direction has been super hard? It sucks: your stuff can't get done because you don't understand where the project stands. Worse, you might have gone down an avenue to make things work, but the path you took is now clearly the wrong one. A quick chat (even around the watercooler) would have really helped out.
So, we all know how bad this is, but why do some of us hold information, and how do we break the cycle?
How to know if you hold information too tightly.
These questions may be hard to answer, but please, answer as objectively as you can - your career and the success of your company depends on it.
Is your role dependent on people talking to you and only you to accurately course correct? Were you in a technical role and find it hard to rely on others to provide technical input? Is it difficult to trust your peers and your immediate reports? Has giving information to your superiors previously caused changes you can't control? Do you fear a shrinking role or responsibility? Is it easier to deal with things when you have active hands-on control rather than delegating?
If you answered yes to more than 3 of these, you are likely to be an information bottle-neck in your organization. So how do you become more transparent and allow information to flow more freely? What is the benefit to you, and how does it address the underlying issues?
If your role is dependent on being the bottle-neck there are 3 possible options.
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Option 1 is that you are seen to be the source of truth. You know what is going on, when it is happening and why. People come to you as a leader in your organization and want confidence and clarity. Congratulations! This is a great place to be. Wouldn't it be awesome if you could relax some of the time and let people understand how to get this information without you at every verse end?
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Option 2 is that you are proactively buffering your team. Your team is productive and happy. Meetings don't disturb them but they need you to tell them what to do. This is the start of the slippery slope to command-and-control and information hoarding. Don't get me wrong, buffering is part and parcel of being a good manager, but knowing what and when to share is important.
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Option 3 is that your organization likes silos. Breaking the silo walls is a fundamental part of the DevOps mentality. As DevOps moves to more SQUADOps team structures, with cross-functional teams being the default mode silos will slow productivity and reduce the agility of your organization.
Leaders don't keep information to themselves. Sure, they understand the nature of confidentiality and also the value of correct timing, but they don't hold all the cards to themselves. Rather, they provide enough information to those around them to enable them to do their jobs effectively and accurately, and keep irrelevant or un-useful things out of the way. The objective that they have here is to make the team effective, it is not to create their own unit within the larger whole. The best leaders provide context as well as information, in a place where their team can easily find it, and let their teams use that information as they see fit, with nudges along the way. This allows team members to be autonomous, to grow and to be invested in what they are doing. The above generates a productive, self-organizing team.
Another upside here is that the leader gets time to concentrate on strategy and allows tactics to fall to the squad.
Buffering a team from external forces is very valuable. But when the squad is too protected and dependent on the leader, then it becomes a rogue unit. The leader's role is to make the team productive in the achievement of the organization's goals; NOT to protect the team at all costs. Yes that might inspire loyalty, but it also removes self-analysis, self-motivation and innovation. A good manager or leader will provide enough context and visibility into the external issues that the team can understand their position, while being protected from the actual pressure of those issues.
Dismantelling silos is a large task. Silos grow for very good reasons. For example, Hardware and Software teams operate on different cycles with different problem sets. Their skillsets and mentalities are different. It is only natural that Silos might grow up around skillset and business focus. However, in order to ship the latest device, or make your software work on the hardware for which it is destined, you need to talk across these silos. It becomes clear that removing the silos while retaining skillset focus is necessary. The best/easiest way to do this is to allow the teams to see what each other is working on, and provide good collaboration opportunities. Information should be flowing, because understanding the context for each silo's work product means that the squad as a whole will function better.
So how do you break the cycle?
The easy answer is "share information". But that is overly simplistic and reductionist. The real answer is start to generate a culture where transparency, communication and collaboration are valued.
Share the information, but reward those on your squad / teams that also share information.
Provide clear roadmaps and explain clearly when and why they change.
Have blameless post-mortems for incidents, missed milestones, missed goals.
Provide a space (slack, confluence, meeting, whatever works for your org) where feedback can be given to your team. Yes it's painful to hear feedback, especially when you miss or make mistakes, but the cultural change drives transparency.
Transparency drives productivity, and more importantly trust.
Even if you don't trust your team to make the right decisions, you need to start practicing transparency. If you have been with your team for a long time and they don't make good decisions, part of that lies on you as the leader. As the SEALs say "There are no bad teams, just bad leaders". That means that your lack of trust in the team reinforces their bad decision making. So start to give your team things to do that boost confidence and promotes active participation. They don't have to make earth shattering decisions, but they do need to feel like they are given the ability to contribute meaningfully. Start with tasks that are easy for them to complete and move up as they grow.
This is all well and good, you say, but there must be downsides? And yes, there are. If you are in a non-transparent organization, the start of your cultural shift to transparency will result in credit being taken for things that you and your team have done. Don't worry though. This is a short-lived issue - Reward your team for the work they have done and being open and collaborative. People will start to come around.
Politics will rear its ugly head too. Practice correct contextualization. Ensure that what you are saying benefits the organization as a whole, provides clear context without finger-pointing, and outlines solutions for problems. Your peers will start to respect you for your strategy. Your superiors will start to rely on what you say. You will end up with more productivity on your team, and the politics will slowly start to fade (or rather move somewhere else). As this cultural change happens, you will start to see better results than you ever did as an information bottle-neck.
Overall, the immediate downsides to practicing a culture of transparency pale into insignificance with the productivity, strategy and healthy workplace that you create. It will feel like you are giving up control, but more people will come to you for advice and creative thinking rather than just information downloads. You will start to enjoy working through real strategic problems, and will be able to leave tactics to those who are closer to the problem.