The 5 Ys and The Buffer Way - THEN to NOW Leadership Shift #2: Radical Transparency

Laura hung up the phone as Paul entered her office. He closed the door slowly and deliberately. He sat down and asked Laura “Have you heard about the payroll spreadsheet?” Laura had no idea what Paul was talking about and looked at him puzzled. “HR accidentally sent the employee payroll to everyone in the company!” Laura’s eyes widened. She gasped “No!?” “Yes”.

Laura immediately turned to her monitor and opened her email. And sure enough, there it was, an all-company email with the attachment ‘Employee Salary Spreadsheet’. Laura double-clicked to open it. Paul got up to see. “Brian is making $15,000 more than me even though he has less experience?” Laura exclaimed. Paul chimed in: “And look, Briana is making $20,000 more than me even though she does not have P+L responsibility. I cannot believe this.” 

Paul and Laura reacted the same way as everyone else at the company did… Needless to say, the days and weeks ahead were not pleasant while people stewed over how everybody else was making more than what they deserved.

We are clearly uncomfortable sharing salary information. By accident, as in this example, or deliberately. But let’s ask ourselves: Why?

The main reason we cringe openly sharing salary information is that we fear the reaction of our people. And the main reason they would react badly is if we have a subjective and unfair THEN compensation system.

But there is another way:

The social media marketing company Buffer publishes on their website the formula they use to calculate the salary for each position. Among other things, the formula considers location and skill level (from beginner to master). But Buffer does not stop there. It goes on to share a spreadsheet showing the salary of each staff member publicly on its website.

At one glimpse we can see that the highest-paid employee is CPO Maria who lives in Boulder. She earns just under $300k. And the lowest paid employee is Meilyna living in the tiny Asian country Brunei, at almost $58k.

Buffer's salary formula.

The benefits of this NOW approach to Buffer?

According to people working at the company: More accountability and trust as people hold themselves and others to higher standards. Along the lines of when everyone knows how much I am making, I better provide at least that value.

Radical Transparency changes the quality of the conversations around the office. In the case of Buffer, Radical Transparency shifts the conversation from THEN speculation and petty jealousy to NOW skills and contribution.

The conversation shifts from ‘I should get at least as much as Brian’ to ‘Hi boss, you are classifying me as an intermediate developer, and I think I am a master developer’. From THEN petty jealousy to NOW my own contribution.

While we might not be able to share our salaries just yet, we all can and must work towards sharing more. Why? In order to empower our front-line people to make good, smart decisions, they need to know more. They need to know more about management’s intentions and goals. And the only way they’ll know more is if we share more. If we share more with Radical Transparency!

So how do you make it happen?

Here is one quick takeaway to lead with more transparency, that you can immediately implement with your team.

The 5 WHYS (5 Ys)

You might have heard of the 5 Ys, a simple method to determine the root cause of a problem. To get from the symptoms to the underlying cause of a problem, you simply ask the question WHY five times. 

Here I am suggesting a different application of the 5 Ys. Asking and answering the Y question five times helps us to be Radically Transparent about our reasoning and rationale behind our decisions.

Let’s say we just decided to hire a new team member. A new brand manager. At the next team meeting, we share and discuss the 5Ys behind that decision.

Our Decision: To hire a new brand manager

1.    WHY?
Because our workload is going to increase

2.    WHY?
Because we are starting a major re-brand push

3.    WHY?
Because our current branding is not up to par

4.    WHY?
Because we have let our branding efforts slide

5.    WHY?
Because we focused on social media outreach and did not make branding enough of a priority.

In 5 Ys we went from decision to rationale and reasoning behind the decision. Sharing and discussing the 5 Ys makes it easy for us to be Radically Transparent about our intentions and goals. As a result, we create buy-in and quite possibly even enthusiasm on our team member’s part.

Your action step:

Pick one decision - it does not have to be something big - and share the 5 Ys of your thinking with your team. Lead with Radical Transparency!