As anyone who has ever played Buzzword Bingo knows, the business world is awash with the concept du jour. If you hear about synergetic incentivizing to reinvent viral blogospheres while leveraging so-lo-mo platforms, you've gotten a dose of today's business buzzwords.
Recently, I have been reading more about trends to bring transparency into business, and I can hear the gears grinding in offices everywhere. "OK, I know how to synergize dynamic action-items and maximize back-end convergence, but how can I spin transparency?" Exactly. Unlike most other business buzzwords, the word transparency has a clear (sorry!), real-world meaning.
I was recently coaching an info-entrepreneur who was experiencing a slow time in her business. She got a call from a client who offered her a several-month project at half her normal hourly rate. As anyone who has run a business knows, she had several choices.
- She could take the job, resent that she is being paid half of what she normally makes, and hope that she can juggle any other projects in during evenings and weekends.
- *She could turn down the project and focus on finding clients who can pay her regular rate.
- She could be transparent with her client and negotiate a third option.
My client took the route of transparency. She told her client, "As you know, my normal rate is $XXX an hour. Right now, my workload is pretty slow so I am interested in taking on this project. However, I would like to revisit this discussion in two months. At that point, I expect to be busier with clients who pay my full rate, and I would like to have the option to renegotiate my rate for this project. I will work as many hours as I can in the next two months; you get my services at a discounted rate and I get a bump in revenue."
My client got the project and now both she and her client benefit. has an incentive to give my client as much work as possible for these two months, ensuring that my client has a steady, if limited, income stream. My client has the option to continue the work after two months at her regular rate, and her client knows that she is receiving high-end services at a significant discount.
What would radical transparency look like in your setting?