Tactical Transparency – Get Transparent or Get Exposed (or Worse, Regulated)
13 November 2009 | blog,Book Reviews | Comments Off
The final conclusion section of the final chapter in Tactical Transparency starts with “Transparency is not a choice. It is a legal, moral and competitive requirement.” I very strongly believe this to be the case and that’s part of the reason why I choose to live my life as transparently as I do. I acknowledge that it isn’t for everyone and that leads me to a second great point that is reiterated throughout the book by Shel Holtz & John C. Havens: being transparent doesn’t require that you expose everything.
It definitely presents enough value to read. That stated it reads more like a playbook made for mid-high level managers with moments where they try and write for the C-suite who all are hesitant to get involved in social media. The format of the book is entirely reflective of business cases/proposals I’ve seen in my short experience inside the Cubicle Nation. Maybe for some folks that style is interesting but for my tastes overarching sections and then the old “tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell you what you told them” chapter format feels more to me like an overworked and over-prepared Powerpoint presentation instead of a real conversation regarding the benefits social media can produce and the potential risks an operation could face as a result.
The book, even when I read it with the audio book playing at 2x normal speed, read slow, painfully slow at some points. I fear that the authors wanted to be completely thorough for those uninitiated who were reading but at the same time failed to keep it pithy enough to keep the experienced hands from wanting to fall asleep.
There’s a great acronym presented in the book, OPEN, which I will definitely be adding to my jargon arsenal. At it’s core this is really what social media represents to the authors and to be honest, I agree with them. Additionally the collection of case studies by large research firms and acknowledged researchers like Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyang also make this an interesting tidbit for the discussion around new media platforms.
This book is a little over a year old and quite frankly it reads that way making reference to now dead services like Pownce and Jaiku (I know, I know, it’s not technically dead but come on let’s be honest) and “recent” events like the Don Imus-Rutgers foul up, JetBlue tarmac debacle, and the Enron meltdown. In a totally geek cred moment they do refer to the social media campaigns done around the show Jericho (full disclosure: I did send 5 pounds of nuts to CBS’ headquarters as part of the movement) but totally spaced on the first time this was done with a little show called Farscape. To be honest that kinda disappointed me because the Farscape folks were much more charitable in how they tried to cultivate an audience: they sent DVDs of the series as part of care packages to the US armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The topics covered regarding social media policies and trusting people in an organization who are already in publicly facing positions to blog and be involved in the conversation around your brand online. I mean seriously, these people know the rules of engagement in person; heck, you may even already be putting these people in front of the mainstream media, why shouldn’t they have the ability to be the digital representation of your company as well? Also touched on shortly was the fact that Digital Natives (mostly Gen Y’s) expect that tools like blogs, wikis, Twitter and Facebook all be made available to them once they walk in the door. If your corporation isn’t going to give them access to these tools, well good luck trying to keep them in the job you hired them for.
Overall I would give this book a 85/100. It’s an extremely solid book which covers topics that so many other texts in this space completely omit: Sarbanes-Oxley, Reg FD, and investor relations are just the tip of the iceberg. Since this text covers this area the book definitely picks up some big bonus points from me. The authors make a really strong case as to why continuing to act in opaque manners will lead to nothing but more government regulation and stringent reporting requirements that will only increase costs.
Decide for yourself on whether or not you want to read this book. I’m just your happy book reviewer.