Confidentiality - the new privacy?
The Wikileaks saga undoubtedly caused a stir in the corporate world in 2010, but what will it mean for the future of communicators whose organizations seek to perserve confidentiality at all costs in 2011? Mike Klein discusses.
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It's long been said that communication is the great lubricant of organizations. But by the same token, confidentiality is their brake fluid – the way by which the organization retains both its competitiveness and its sense of control.
Now, with WikiLeaks a household name, and with the speed and ease with which corporate “secrets” can be made public, more than a few in the business world are asking the question: “Is confidentiality today what privacy was last year– a once cherished source of protection that is about to go out the cyberwindow?”
For business communicators, the implications are massive. After nearly twenty years of constant progress fuelled by the acceptance of communication tools that have increased interactivity and transparency both with internal and external audiences, the threat to confidentiality incubates the seeds of a backlash.
Despite our near constant progress, not all within the corporate world have embraced the focus on communication and transparency. Indeed, many in both middle management and senior ranks have considered such a focus a distraction from “real work,” an intrusion into activities best kept closely held, and a threat to hierarchical power.
Potential backlash
While corporate leaks are not a new phenomenon, the sudden high profile of WikiLeaks has raised alarm bells in the corporate world. I suspect, as well, that it's piqued the curiosity of old-school managers, perhaps with old-school communicators like those in the investor relations world, to see what measures could be taken to rein in the transparency and the ease by which information flows within their respective organizations.
Some potential complications in the short term:
1. Smaller confidential loops
One way in which organizations may fight to maintain confidentiality is reducing the size and breadth of decision making groups, excluding people who may be seen as peripheral and/or risky. Indeed, in one organization I'm familiar with, a boast was shared about how the participation loop in a recent decision was reduced from a 3-digit to a 1-digit number. Moreover, where communicators do not operate at board level, the progress seen in involving communicators in “big decisions” may recede.
3. Hastier decisions
As the risk of lost confidentiality is linked with the amount of time involved with keeping a matter secret, senior managers will be under increased pressure to make more decisions more quickly and with narrower input.
3. Anti-social Intranets
Another means by which control may seemingly be regained could be a tightening of intranet policies and functionalities, with a shift away from open forums where staff could raise and discuss sensitive issues, and towards reversion to a medium through which the organization distributes pronouncements in the old top-down, one-way style of old.
4. Shifts in default positions and tougher approval loops
While in many organizations, the default position for communication has shifted towards transparency unless specifically instructed otherwise, many organizations may shift towards a presumption of confidentiality unless items are specifically released. Such a shift may render the job of business communicators far more laborious, with extensive approvals required to share information once distributed routinely.
5. Downsizing communication functions
Some of the more Luddite senior managers, either by concluding that the volume of communications needs to be reduced, or that uppity communication functions are at the heart of the problem of decreased confidentiality, may crack down hard on their communicator ranks. Internal communication and public relations staff may be slashed and the survivors placed under the strict oversight of investor relations folk who have a tradition of greater discipline and skill in securing information.
2011 may well see a battening down of the hatches of corporate communication, particularly if there is a backlash that seeks to preserve organizational confidentiality at all costs.
After an initial “righting of the ship”, however, “all costs” could mount precipitously and quickly.
6. Reality Gaps incubating leaks
Perversely, the adoption of hard official lines that are at odds with operational reality may create far more opportunity for leakage. For example, a line that “operations are doing fine” or that “service is 100 percentavailable” becomes untenable when customer service staff is barraged with complaints and then start complaining to their friends, or worse, to inbound callers.
7. Grapevine grows wildly
Internal social networks have long been a primary source both of information and of relatedness within and around large organizations. But if organizations tighten official information flows, they leave greater space and demand for unofficial information. Where organizations don’t put a credible story out about secretive activities, the grapevine comes up with alternative ways to connect the dots, further sowing distrust, and perhaps even panic.
While the above consequences are indeed quite scary, they may not be self-evident to managers who are seeking to retain their sense of control and their ability to protect sensitive information. Moreover, communicators may even find themselves outside the loop when the organization seeks to impose a more restrictive communication regime.
Retaliation
Still, there are steps communicators can take to challenge this kind of retrenchment:
Risk is a two-way street: Clarify, and where possible, quantify the risks involved in moving back to the days of old-school corporate secrecy. Things like misalignment of key players, suboptimal use of resources and a disoriented workforce unable to see the connection between their efforts and organizational outcomes.
Work the real “internal social network”: Perhaps the Yammer trial is being shelved, but the underlying social dynamics – the personal, professional and “tribal” networks within your organization are as accessible as ever, and likely to become even more active if online interaction becomes more difficult. Look at your organization’s objectives, who has the most to win or lose, begin connecting the dots, and start facilitating the kind of personal, verbal conversations that actually shift mindsets and behavior.
Focus on the cost of loss: In their excellent book on accountability, entitled Leadership Without Excuses, Jeff Grimshaw and Gregg Baron discuss the idea that the net value of lost privileges, such as access to good information, is often worth far more to employees than things that have been gained, like cash bonuses. Shutting down intranets, or even clamping down on internal blogging and discussion, could create a morale-destroying sense of loss, and perhaps even a sense of betrayal that could push employees – and their own troves of valuable information – into the hands of hungrier or more open competitors. Make sure your “counter-revolutionaries” see that price tag before they darken your discussion boards.
Have your say
Do you think the Wikileaks saga will affect the role of internal and external communications in organizations? Has it impacted negatively on the progress internal communicators have made for transparency and interactivity within organizations? Share your thoughts.
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