Social media scheduling startup Buffer takes transparency seriously, will it help the business?
Many fine words have been written about openness, sharing and collaboration in recent years but few organisations really practice what’s been preached. An exception to this is social media service Buffer that takes openness to extreme levels.
Buffer keeps few secrets with the company sharing its monthly operating figures, internal emails and even its formula for calculating salaries.
The company’s CEO Joel Gascoigne believes this helps build trust in his startup, saying in his blog:
There are many reasons we default to transparency at Buffer, and perhaps the most important is that I genuinely believe it is the most effective way to build trust. This means trust amongst our team but also trust from users, customers, potential future customers and the wider public who encounter us in any way.
Building trust is one of the most important tasks of any business owner or manager; whether it’s with customers, staff, suppliers or investors and startups have a bigger task than most. So Joel is onto something with this approach although one wonders how long the philosophy will last as the company grows.
One thing that stands out in Buffer’s figures is how little Joel and his staff earn; while $158,000 is a good wage it isn’t the massive income that those who glamourize startups pretend founders earn.
Joel’s experiment with Buffer is an interesting experiment and it will be fascinating to see how long the company continues the philosophy of extreme transparency and how many others follow the example.
While it might not be necessary to be as open as Joel Gascoigne and Buffer, the idea of defaulting to transparency is one that many organisations – particularly governments – would benefit from adopting.