“To be clear and right off the bat, I am not in favor of 100% transparency as what defines an open company… or 100% of people seeing 100% of a companies information 100% of the time. That is a bad idea. Anyone advocating for that type of transparency is simply not working in reality.”

However, I personally DO advocate for that type of transparency. I just propose that thee should be two levels of exposure – one internal and one external. Imagine the impact that such brutal internal openness would create. If we are all honest we really know who is playing solitaire and who is doing what – at least we think we do. I think it at least bears value to entertain the consideration of total openness.

Would it be too Orwellian? Or would it really be to the ultimate betterment of the Enterprise? I know a lot of open concepts are initially hard to swallow, but once you look at things from a truly “open” mind only then can the value be fully realized!
Matt

While I do, most definitely, LOVE the new site (well I guess it’s 3 months old at this point) I think it would be REALLY wonderful if there were TRUE transparency in most businesses I’ve seen.

I think the stream would look something like this:

Tom – just sent a tweet to his girlfriend.

Joan – just ordered flowers for her mom’s birthday.

Crystal – is playing solitaire (again).

Bryan – just placed an illegal bet against the Dallas Cowboys on NFLbet.net.

Joe – has his door closed and is looking at porn.

Chris – is actually working and just closed another major account.

Obviously this is meant to be a bit humorous; however, it IS the sad reality at many companies. Wouldn’t it be great to have TOTAL disclosure and transparency?

On a serious note though, I very much respect the continued “pushing the envelope” vision you continue to bring to your ventures! I tend to agree in the “open” model.

In our own business we are increasing our participation in an open-source community where we essentially donate our work for the betterment of the overall community. And I have even initiated a short-term policy driving all of our local business channels to Guru.com in order to build a top presence there despite many naysayers even from within my own team.

Despite the fact that we are exposing these clients (who are actually already sold on utilizing our services) to a competitive pool of over 45,000 developers worldwide, we have not lost a single client to the competition while growing our ranking from over 1000 just 90 days ago to our current #1 ranking today.

If you push the envelope you WILL reap rewards, and ultimately your clients recognize the value of such thinking.

Thanks for your companies efforts in broadening the minds of companies worldwide!

Matt

That’s ok. That makes sense. For a normal business.

But your business doesn’t appear to be normal, at least that doesn’t appear to be how you are positioning yourselves.

There is something odd about a change of tone isn’t there? Especially from a group of people that do have (or at least proclaim to enjoy) or certain “digital footprint” (not my term that). The foot print is there. One can look back at it and see what the person had to say and how they said it.

The question is this – is there room within the Dachis way of doing things that allows people to shine and be authentic? Presumably the business brought this people in because of what they had to say and how they went about saying it so surely it is in your interest (as a business) that they continue to do this, is it not?

If you were to employ me, for example, I would assume that my approach is the approach you’re looking for (this wouldn’t happen. Trust me) and it would therefore be a nonsense for me to change my tone of voice. It would also be a nonsense for you to ask me to change it.

With warm regards from Munich
Marcus

I have been attracted by your style of open communication, modeling the integration of social media into your business communication. I am in the process of coalescing a partnership of peers within the coaching industry and looking for/at innovative business models from the world of consulting. Your business is attracting me as a model.

It seems to me that the space where web 2.0 meets business – what you call “social business” is also a place for integration of the basic drivers of the two worlds. To oversimplify we might say that the basic driver in the web 2.0 world is “contribution” (e.g. Wikipedia, open source software, FB), while the basic driver in business is “profit”. I am curious about how these two drivers come together within the Dachis Group – specifically within the internal agreements which give structure to your culture.

What are you willing to share about your internal business model? I am particularly interested in what agreements you might have crafted about shared ownership/decision making, and revenue/profit sharing etc.

With interest,
Clive

I think that’s a shame.

For more on potential insights, be sure to check out what IBMer Luis Suarez is doing with email.