Transparency is the New Gobbledygook

Yes, Gobbledygook is an actual word. 

Its origin came from a Congressman in 1944 named Maury Maverick. Maverick told his colleagues to speak plain English and “stay off the gobbledygook language,” which was basically congressmen using obscure bureaucratic language.  He said he made up the word “in imitation of turkey noise.”

Exactly. Good on you Maury.

If I hear another executive or salesperson use the phrase “we just need to be more transparent” I’m going to lose my celluloid brains.

Transparency has continued to be bantered around like some kind of badge of honor or nightclub password that gets you past the corded celeb only ropes into the show. 

“Transparency,” Oh...okay…you can come in…”

Please. 

Enough is enough. 

If you tell me you’re trying to be transparent, I get the heebie jeebies. Really. I do. When that word hit the corporate lexicon, I was like, what??? 

That’s like the salesman at your Mercedes Benz dealership saying “Oh, by the way, the windows in this model are transparent.” 

Uh...yea...windows are supposed to be transparent because um... they’re windows. 

Transparency is not something you say. It’s something you are.

It’s a noun. It’s a quality or state. 

Transparent vs. Transparency

The word transparent (not transparency) is an adjective.

It means, “easily seen through, recognized, or detected.”

When you are going over your quarterly strategy, your strategy should be transparent. Not, “With the intention in mind of being transparent…” Man... if I’m sitting in that meeting the sphincter valves on my butt tighten up. 

Have you ever been in a business meeting and someone spoke who was just unbelievably candid? You know, you were actually riveted by the fact that he or she had the cojones to say it like it is?

Precisely. 

When someone is candid and sees through the bullshit and recognizes the truth of something, everyone turns their head, as they should. 

Because what all CEO’s and companies want is the truth. 

They want what is not transparent to be “seen through, recognized and detected.”

And employees or staff? My experience is some of the smartest people are on the teams that make up the woof and warp of a company. I mean some really crazy smart people are on these teams.

And you know what really crazy smart people hate?

They hate when something smells like, looks like, sounds like transparency and it’s not.

It insults their intelligence. 

If you look at the times you were listening to a talk or presentation you will most likely have experienced this. You shook your head while listening to it, or when you shared a drink later after hours with your colleagues, you were all talking about the parts that were in fact B.S. You had this kind of queasy feeling that you couldn’t put your finger on.

You know like:

“Hmmmm...were we getting the total dope on this?”

Transparency in many cases (not all) is being used to co-opt your mind. It’s like someone saying “I’m going to be totally honest with you.” Honesty co-opts our sense of hearing, hits our heads and hearts because we want to hear honesty. 

Even if we are suspect of it.

The businesses I consult or speak at I have this great opportunity to meet some really bright minds. Intelligence is kind of a drug, you know? You just want to inject more of that into the business culture. 

And intelligence is a lot like those German Shepherd drug sniffing FBI dogs. Outwardly they just look like your next-door neighbor's dog. But when they stop at your luggage, sniff, and then look up at you with those big innocent eyes they have in essence telepathically told you,  

“Hey! I did my job! I’ve ‘easily seen through, recognized, or detected,’ what’s in your bag!”

And whether it’s something that shouldn’t be in your bag and you hoped to get away with it, or it’s just a small decorative plant you stuffed in your overhead baggage to give to your wife, intelligence sniffs it out either way.

And that’s really your sounding board for being transparent.

Ask the most intelligent across your teams. They may look at each other like, “She really wants to know what we think?!” and or they may look at you like “Do you really want to know what I think?” 

Because yes, in many business cultures there’s still a cult of the gobbledygook preventing total transparency.

And that is, singularly, unintelligent.