I have always been interested in thinking about cultures, about the manifestations of behaviour, beliefs, interaction protocols that emerges when a bunch of people come together. They may be formally instituted by some authority of the body of people or they might just appear informally through the experiences of the group and the circumstances they have tided through. This includes thinking about corporate culture, work dynamics and influences of these on churning out an actual product. It’s interesting how subtle, unwritten things can have such a huge effect on tangible stuff.
And it does. Recent literature I have looked into kept on stressing about open-ness, transparency and the need to establish trust. First John C Maxwell, a pastor who lectures and write on leadership emphasized the importance of building trust through honesty and open-ness. In essence, open-ness is not just a characteristic for an individual but also for organizations; in fact it is even more important for an organization – it is such cultures that nurture good characters and great leaders. Similarly, Jack Welch wrote a lot about candor and not hiding things from people within the organization especially when it relates to work matters. The idea is to prevent the establishment of an informal fabric of relationships, information, exchanges and underground conflicts or rivalry that may harm the organization unknowingly. Opening up allows these matters to be revealed and resolved readily, together with the official matters.
Open-ness is supposedly easier to cultivate in a small group because the less people to establish a trusting relationship with, the faster the group will be able to exhibit a strong open culture. Unfortunately a little misunderstanding or defensiveness/closeness on any part of the members can quickly cripple the workings of the entire group. Therefore while the smallest of teams can exploit the advantages of open-ness the quickest, it is the same people/groups who are more vulnerable to the problems of close-ness and thus have little choice but to be open or fail.
Here comes the advice about projects, academic or community: maintain very open cultures and actively ensure everyone speaks their mind fully and totally to everyone else. No ranting about someone to someone else in particular!
