This blog will likely be more painful to pen than most, as integrity and transparency are standards whose definitions don't allow for partial accomplishment.
Integrity speaks to the adherence to moral and ethical principles of honesty and forthrightness. Wikipedia adds: "a personal choice to uphold oneself to consistently moral and ethical standards." It is that "consistency" that gets most of us (and I'm certainly no exception, darn it!).
Transparency is essentially operating your business in such a way as to demonstrate a willingness to share information so that it is easy for others to see your actions.
Integrity + transparency is increasingly the blueprint for successful business operations as we progress through the 21st century. Gone are the days when we could conceal our breaches of integrity, and hide from our faults. Even those in our society who would understandably much prefer to stay in the shadows are now easily exposed with apps like Offender Locator (for finding out how close to you are the nearest convicted sex offenders). It is equally easy for customers and prospects to find out how well we operate our businesses through a growing number of social platforms.
While it may seem obvious that integrity and transparency are important, the reason they matter so much bears repeated reflection.
There was a time in the not so distant past when words meant something, i.e. they mattered. There was a time when it was understood that a verbal agreement was just as binding as a signed contract. Sadly, both concepts are becoming a distant memory. I've lost track of the number of times in recent years that the terms of a written agreement were ignored, much less the number of times someone's word essentially meant nothing. Is it any wonder why transparency struggles to get a foothold? Certainly none of us naturally want our failures exposed to the world.
Again, integrity is always much easier to claim than it is to consistently live out. And transparency is much easier to embrace when your closet isn't filled with integrity-breaches.
But here's the deal. If we accept that we all fall short of the ideal, and we also accept (no matter how reluctantly) that it is increasingly hard to conceal our failures, why not allow our failures to be publicly exposed, and show others how we deal with those failures? (Which I would contend is as much a measure of a commitment to integrity as anything.)
As painful as it is to confess, at 30dps we have had our failures. Most often, they have been a result of becoming over-extended and/or allowing one customer's demands to dominate our attention to the neglect of others' (and ultimately, MY failure as a leader and manager). But we have a spoken philosophy to "always do the right thing," which permeates our company culture. I believe it is that philosophy that has allowed us to be transparent with our clients and has allowed us to keep customers for long periods of time.
So why are integrity and transparency important? Because words SHOULD matter, and verbal (and written) agreements SHOULD be considered binding. As business owners, operators and even employees, our honor and our livelihoods stand in the balance. Doing the right thing, even if it means giving up something (including your “rights” or some profitability), isn’t always easy. But it’s always right!
Great ideas, excellent products, hard work and maximum effort are baseline requirements for providing an amazing customer experience. But without integrity and transparency, in this day and age, any success is likely fleeting... and ultimately, unsatisfying.
