How transparency can create value for you

Transparency Exercise

Talking about the challenges and opportunities…

How do you turn the challenges of transparency into opportunities? Being transparent and sharing your company dilemmas will put you in a vulnerable position, but is enables you to showcase how you tackle them. Consider where you can make the biggest impact (see our sustainability exercise). What are your focus areas? What topics and issues can you share and with whom?

Annual reports, impact measurements and stakeholder engagements are some examples of how you can enhance transparency within your organization. Share issues with other parties in the sector of let others do the talk by means of storytelling. The openness that transparency will generate could lead to sustainable relationships and innovations that enable growth. Also, businesses that can explain the issues they face are appreciated more by their stakeholders.

Time: 1 hour

Difficulty: advanced

What you’ll learn: identify how to create value through transparency

Participants: 2-8 team members

Exercise: Let’s take a moment to follow the steps below:

Step 1: Think about it: how transparent are you? How does your organization value transparency and how well is your impact reported and communicated? Discuss this with your team for 15 minutes.

Step 2: Analyze: What are the biggest challenges your organization or supply chain faces (that put you in a vulnerable position)? And what are the most inspiring elements of your business that could add value? Try to really think this through and write down the 3 most important challenges and 3 most important strengths of your specific business.

Step 3: Per challenge you wrote down, think of a creative and vulnerable way to be transparent about these issues and think about an attractive approach for each of your stakeholders. Discuss each topic and idea within the team. Try to be inventive: McDonald’s for example devoted a website to answering all tough questions from consumers about their production processes and denim brand Nudie Jeans recently mapped all its suppliers, to enhance transparency in the fashion chain.

Let the opportunities that transparency can offer inspire you!