Difference between revisions of "Process Transparency"

I am hoping that members of the aboutus community that read the following content, will offer suggestions for one or more page titles for this content, where continuing community input and dialog can continue.

I am one that has passion to make the world a better place. Some that read this content might question this statement, thinking I try to pollute a positive community atmosphere – which is not my intent.

Rather I think to “really” make the world a better place much more process transparency is needed, and then to openly discuss, as a community, the implications of what we see when there is real transparency. The fact is making the world a better place often requires that “political hot potato issues”, or issues some might find “uncomfortable” be exposed and openly discussed in a community. If members of the community cannot do this without being chastised or made to feel guilty, then how can we expect, as a community, to do more “stuff” that really matters and that is significant and world changing?

If I am a starving child and go to sleep, I might have dreams that make me feel good and happy. But then my stomach begins to grumble and I awake faced with my physical reality, and am no better off than before my dream. For me personally, making the world a better place is relative to the world the child encounters after she wakes up from her dream.

In the Wiki community, such as the good hearted people at Recent Changes Camp in Portland (which I truly believe are good hearted people with passion to make the world a better place), I sense a tone of “by more participation in a nurturing community atmosphere, we can all make the world a better place, and do significant things that really matter”. In the way of an analogy I wonder, will this “stuff” be only in the dream world of the hungry girl, or in the brutal world that she currently encounters after she wakes up? My personal hope is that it is the latter.

In this girl’s “awake” world, a global issue is, “who has the money – the wealth?” Is it increasingly in the hands of the few or the many? That is an important issue. For example if the girl had a lot more money, she would not be hungry.

At Recent Changes Camp I heard more than once, “as a community we can do stuff that really matters without money – money is over rated”. In such regard I think it would be an interesting transparency experiment, to “really” make the aboutus process transparent, to see if this is actually the case – that a community really can do significant “stuff” that really matters, without money.

In the spirit of transparency I am going to begin an explanation of the aboutus birthing process, which might be completely wrong – because in fact I have to currently guess about this process. That is because this process is not currently transparent.

I bring this up because at the recent stake holders meeting it was specifically mentioned that aboutus tries to go the extra mile, not to “talk the talk” but rather to “walk the walk” in terms of real transparency – and I commend them on letting the “community” in on their strategic planning process.

Again, as a community can we really do stuff that matters, without money? It is my current understanding (readily admit it could be wrong) that all we do and see and participate in, at aboutus, hinges on money.

Is this money funding process some type of new community process? I don’t think so, rather I believe it is the typical “high growth business model” process. Basically it works like this:

At the beginning of a project to do something of significance, that matters, there is risk. A few wealthy individuals cover this risk with their money, in exchange for the opportunity to make a lot of money in return, at a later stage of the project’s evolution. If the wealthy individuals did not think that upside existed, they would not provide their money in the first place – thus their underlying motive is to make lots of money on the risk they take. Who exactly are these people at aboutus, how much of their money are they risking? Currently the community does not know – it is not transparent.

As this high growth business model process progresses there become involved other key aboutus people that go out and sell or solicit (to deep pockets) the next round of funding (meaning aboutus asks for more money), and then after that, the next round of funding opportunity - for example to venture capitalists or investment companies.

This process is typically very much a “sales game”, because one has to have a good “pitch” to get these deep pocketed entities to open their wallets – and these entities again want to make lots of money in exchange for the risk they take. At this stage of the aboutus growth process will the community get to see the content of these pitches – meaning what are these deep pockets being told, to convince them to invest in the aboutus risk? – another transparency benchmark.

And as this high growth business model start up process continues, at some stage these early stage investors expect to get financially rewarded, and that too is part of the sales pitch – when will this happen? – is what these investors want to know.

In many cases this happens around the time there is an opportunity to sell stock to the public (IPO meaning “initial public offering). Note there is lots of literature one can find on the web, about how this process is corrupt, typically “insiders” and people of more wealth and influence get the opportunity to invest around this IPO time, before the general public – and as a result they make a lot more money than the average Joe or Jane (community member?) that makes a public stock investment

Note when Google first started up they did this IPO process differently, so more of the average public could take part, and the deep pockets on Wall Street did not like it, and some refused to “push” Google stock as a result. There exist types of brokers and sales people that in effect make lucrative commissions on these early stage funding deals, and if one goes directly to the public (like Google did) these folks might lose their typical income stream, so are not typically excited about this added “democracy” in the process. Another transparency benchmark is to allow the community to see who these brokers are and the amounts of their commissions.

It is also not too far after this IPO that key staff and founders of the high growth business model, if it generators lots of media buzz and interest in the investment community, in effect gain lots of wealth. Another transparency benchmark - how much wealth did these individual gain?

So at the end of this aboutus birthing process the vast majority of the aboutus community gains no increase in wealth – rather just the “few”. And it is this type of birthing process, especially in technology driven companies, that increasingly puts more wealth in the pockets of the few, and causes an imbalance of wealth and influence in societies.

This tone might have some wondering if I am a communist. In stark contrast I am very much a capitalist. I am the first to say, “it is the person talking the risk and putting ‘skin in the game’ that deserves financial reward (I am not one that advocates for forced redistribution of wealth to gain equality).

I believe we can be even more “capitalistic” than today’s capitalists (to enable us to do more stuff that really matters), if the “community” can figure out how to provide community members with the opportunity to take early stage risk. It is because Joe and Jane (community members) are not given the opportunity to become financially involved with this earliest stage risk, that there is a wealth imbalance in societies.

This earliest stage risk requires money. Today the process is one of only the few being given the chance to take this risk, so their risk is very high, and thus they expect to gain lots of money in return. Instead there is potential for a large community to share this risk, and then the risk burden on each individual is much lower, and also each community member gets the better upside financial potential.

Again, this all comes back to comments I heard at Recent Changes Camp - “we don’t need money to do stuff that really matters”. Being “very” transparent will demonstrate if this is actually the case. And if money is truly needed, being more transparent will also help to show which entities currently take the risk and make the gains, and how this equation might be changed, so that there is more community participation in the process.

These are indeed weighty transparency issues, and I suspect the aboutus community is not the main entity that will be asked if this better transparency will be allowed – rather it is likely the deep pocketed risk investors that must likely give their blessing – because these types of issues can hit a little too close to home for some of these people. But that is the nature of increased transparency – making the “behind the scenes” processes that really lie behind aboutus growth and success, more transparent to the aboutus community.

One can argue that the aboutus community does not need this increased level of transparency to contribute, and feel good about themselves within the community – and I would agree. Yet without that transparency they also lack the opportunity to learn about, and share information about, important underlying process dynamics that create success or failure in new ventures and projects. And if our community is truly going to do more and better “stuff” that really matters, it would seem that having this increased process understanding would be beneficial.

In the spirit of transparency I disclose that one of my personal areas of interest, in terms of “doing stuff that really matters”, is trying to gain new process dynamics that allow novel ventures or projects to come into existence, even if there is no high growth business model motive or passion.

That is an important issue, because most people in the populace have no passion to grow very large or big or controlling (today’s early stage risk investors typically want a high degree of control or they get nervous), rather would be happy and fulfilled at a much smaller scale. Yet today new “stuff” that people want to do (their project or vision or venture) often involves risk (that is the nature of being new), and today it is very difficult to gain funding for such risk, without pitching a high growth business model. And for people that try to go down that road, they will discover that the vast majority are rejected by today’s risk funders (for many reasons that we can further discuss).

So I am hoping this content might start some interesting and engaging lines of conversation involving process transparency etc., by members of the aboutus community. I am also hoping that aboutus community members will rearrange my content to gain more clarity and hopefully reduce the length of this content. Perhaps this type of content and community dialog could be put under a section called something like, “follow the behind the scenes birthing and growth process of aboutus”. MartinPfahler