Standing in the shadows

I'm interested in secrets. Patrick provides a link to the PostSecrets site. It's compelling stuff. Beautiful, banal, disturbing. I can't peel my eyes away from the screen. Public secrets. I love the fact that these aren't just words but actual objects created by someone. The internet as confessional.

The thing is, if you give people an opportunity to share things that are normally hidden then they may use it. And that which is hidden is not always a personal secret. Every organisation has things that aren't talked about in public ("the 360 degree feedback process is rigged", "the CEO is having an affair with the CFO's wife", "we are technically insolvent"). Events, people, issues that might get chewed out over a beer or a coffee, that only a certain select few might be aware of, but that exist nonetheless. More opportunities for communication mean more opportunities for someone to spill the beans. And once those beans are spilled it's might tricky to unspill them.

The fear about of employee blogs or tools like wikis (or even old-school bulletin boards) is that someone may say something "wrong". It's often better if that wrong thing happens to be false - denials can be issued and apologies made. But what if that thing happens to be true? Oh dear.

I don't think it's possible (or even desirable) for everyone to be honest & open all the time. The optimum number of secrets in your life is not zero. So what do we do?

So part of this is having a decent internal comms policy in place - what can't people talk about? But this will only go so far - because a lot of the rules around what issues can be discussed & how aren't actually recordable. People that have been around for a long time know these, but newbies don't. So the people that need help & advice are the newbies.

Of course, you want some people rocking the boat - otherwise your organisation is dead. Organisations need to find constructive, talented troublemakers and find ways of getting them to make trouble in helpful ways (I realise there's all kinds of issues I'm skirting around here but maybe you can help me tease them out). Now I believe that blogs & other social media are a great way to identify these useful thorns. But then I would.