The Importance of Operational Transparency

OK, you might think what I'm about to say is obvious.

"Alex - come on, man! That's completely obvious!", you may say.

Well, if that's the case, then good for you!

I'm currently reading an insightful new book, The Diary of a CEO, by Steven Bartlett (some may know him from the UK TV show Dragon's Den - I plan to do a separate review of the book soon), and although he's better known for his Marketing prowess, I read something interesting about Operations that connected some dots in my mind of an understanding I have long known during my career in Operations but hadn't consciously realised until seeing it called out.

What is Operational Transparency?

I'll briefly paraphrase that the concept of Operational Transparency was delivered by way of an example using Uber (and also referenced some interesting insights from the great Rory Sutherland) - saying that there is a difference between the old days of looking for a taxi cab and not knowing how long it will take to find one, to the more recent times of booking a cab on Uber and being able to track it on a map.

In both cases it may actually take the same amount of time before you step into that cab, but being able to see the cab getting closer on a map makes the process less stressful and is a better, more palatable experience overall - the difference being, there is the transparency of seeing that cab get closer as you wait for it.

Now whilst I occasionally may use Uber when I'm in a Western city, or more typically, their competitor, Grab, when I'm in Asia, designing taxi apps is not my game.

I work in Technical and Business Operations, and for me I realised a parallel connection in the context of my area of work and how it creates a great experience for my own end customers - whether it's an external commercial customer or an internal stakeholder - the importance of enabling them to see the status of anything I'm working on at any given time.

What are the benefits?

Whether I'm working on a specific project or designing an end-to-end operational framework, the impact and importance of consistent operational transparency is huge.

Being able to quickly see where that support ticket is in the queue, or what status that project or task has, at any given time and at your own convenience, makes a significant difference in the end user experience.

Providing full transparency during the whole end-to-end process is critically important, and allows your end customer to feel some peace of mind and reassurance.

Sure - in any case the customer wants it complete as quickly as possible. Fair enough!

But if they don't know the status and they feel they need to ask me what's happening, it's not a great experience for them.

However, if they can see what I'm working on in real time, and can see exactly how much progress is made, whenever it suits them, then they would feel far less anxious and more assured than not knowing.

I have always worked in a fully transparent way but I hadn't consciously realised why I felt it was so important - so reading those pages in that book today made it all become clear in my mind.

Providing that positive customer experience is why I love working in that way, and that's why I feel transparency is so important.

How do we do it?

During this conscious reckoning around transparency the penny also dropped on why I love working with Atlassian Jira so much. It enables any of my end customers or internal stakeholders to see exactly what I'm working on at any given time, to be able to track it, see the comments I make, and it gives them peace of mind and reassurance.

But it doesn't need to be Jira - it can be any number of task productivity tools varying in simplicity / complexity - tools such as Asana or Trello.

Whatever best suits you.

My conclusion

Yes - the project will take the same amount of time whether there is transparency or not - but the transparency provides a far better customer experience.

Like I said earlier, you may feel this is all obvious. And you'd probably be right.

But seeing it expressed by way of that taxi example really helped hammer the point home and iterated the importance of full operational transparency.

Thanks for reading.