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.

The technology of the secret

Secrets are inherently interesting things. Facts & stories about ourselves that we choose not to share with everyone. I remember one conversation with an acquaintance many years ago where we talked about our secrets. N.B. We didn't tell each other our secrets. We just talked about who we had shared them with. And why. He said: "Well, you are secrets, aren't you?"

Simply hiding something makes it more desirable to others. We may hide it for any number of reasons. It may be shameful, boring, illegal, hurtful. Whatever it is, we don't want people to know about it. We manage & maintain our identities and the exposure of a secret threatens that. Our secrets make us vulnerable. And because they are a part of ourselves that form us that we cannot publicly acknowledge, they can be a heavy burden. Many cultures have developed rituals & roles for the entrustment of secrets to others. The catholic confessional, the psychiatrist's couch.

Secrets (of ourselves & also of others) are powerful tokens of exchange. The secrets of others might be exchanged for material gain but our own secrets are offered to people to build trust between us. We often start with little vulnerabilities and then move on to the bigger things. And in a world where random connections are increasingly common, we sometimes fell happier giving our secrets to complete strangers instead of those close to us.

So why I am writing about secrets?

1. As a knowledge manager, I have been entrusted with secrets - of both groups & individuals. During lessons learned debriefs, participant interviews, all kinds of things. It surprised me when it began happening. I'd flatter myself that it's because I'm a good listener but I suspect it has more to do with the voracious need that people have to unburden themselves. There are fewer priests than there used to be and there is still a stigma (& a cost) attached to seeing a shrink for some people. It's not just knowledge managers - HR people get it to. Anyone who's reasonably sympathetic and without an obvious axe to grind.

Do we need to bring professional secret-keepers back?

2. These new communications technologies - not just the internet but mobile phones & digital cameras - require us to manage our identities in ever more complex ways. And they make our secrets increasingly fragile to exposure. We need some level of privacy, some control over our own identities. But it won't be the same as the forms we've had before. Whether it will be sufficient remains to be seen.