The Open Book Dilemma: How Much Should You Really Tell Your Team?
There is a question that every single founder faces as their business grows. It’s a question that lives at the very nexus of leadership, trust, and fear. It keeps us up at night, and there is no easy, one-size-fits-all answer.
That question is: How much should I tell my team about the finances of the business?
Do you open the books completely, sharing every line of the profit and loss statement, risking panic in the tough times and entitlement in the good? Or do you keep the numbers locked away, a burden for you alone to carry, risking a team that feels disconnected and disengaged from the true health of the business?
This is the leadership tightrope. On one side is the fear of chaos; on the other is the desire for a culture of ownership. Finding your balance on this tightrope is one of the most critical acts of a scaling leader.
This exact dilemma was at the heart of an incredibly candid and insightful conversation I had on my podcast with the brilliant Sally Obermeder. Many of you know Sally as a beloved television personality, but she is also the formidable co-founder of the e-commerce powerhouse, SWIISH.com, which she has built to a material size alongside her sister.
Sally is deep in the trenches of scaling a successful business, and she came to our chat asking the tough, strategic questions on behalf of founders everywhere. Her central challenge was this very issue of transparency and how it intertwines with leadership, culture, and influence.
Our conversation became a masterclass in how to build a high-trust, high-performance team.
Today, I want to expand on the framework I shared with Sally. This is my guide to navigating the Open Book Dilemma and using strategic transparency to fuel your growth.
The Two Extremes (And Why Both Are Flawed)
Most founders fall into one of two camps when it comes to financial transparency, and both have significant drawbacks.
Camp A: The Vault (Zero Transparency)
This is the traditional, old-school approach. The founder believes that the finances are their burden alone. They keep everything under lock and key.
- The Rationale: "I don't want to worry the team if things are tight." "If they see how much profit we're making, they'll all ask for a raise." "It's none of their business."
- The Unintended Consequence: You create a culture of "us versus them." The team feels like hired hands, not partners in the mission. They have no concept of the true costs of running the business, so they can't make commercially smart decisions. They don't understand why certain projects are prioritized, leading to frustration and a lack of alignment. They are rowing, but they have no idea if the boat is heading for a waterfall or an island of gold.
Camp B: The Glass House (Radical Transparency)
This is the modern, Silicon Valley-style approach. Share everything. Every salary, every expense, every line of the P&L is open for all to see.
- The Rationale: "This builds ultimate trust and creates a true ownership mindset." "Everyone will feel like a founder."
- The Unintended Consequence: Raw financial data without context can be incredibly misleading and overwhelming. Not everyone on your team is financially literate, and they can easily draw the wrong conclusions. Seeing a big revenue number without understanding the costs and margins can still lead to entitlement. It can create distraction and anxiety for team members who should be focused on their specific roles, not worrying about the company's cash flow.
As with most things in leadership, the answer is not at the extremes. It is in a strategic, thoughtful middle ground.
The Third Way - My Strategic Transparency Framework
I believe in strategic transparency. This isn't about sharing everything; it's about sharing the right things with the right people for the right reasons. The goal is not to turn every employee into an accountant. The goal is to give every single person on your team a clear line of sight between their daily work and the company's success.
Here's how you do it:
1. Separate the Metrics from the Bank Account
Your team does not need to see the full, detailed P&L statement. What they need to see are the key performance indicators (KPIs) that they can directly influence. Every single role in your business should have a "number." This number is the primary metric by which their success is measured.
- For a Marketing Team: Their number might be Website Conversion Rate or Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).
- For a Customer Service Team: Their number might be Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Retention Rate.
- For a Warehouse Team: Their number might be Order Fulfilment Accuracy or Dispatch Time.
2. Create a "Cascade of Metrics"
These individual and team KPIs should directly feed into the company's overall high-level goals. You need to show them how their number connects to the bigger picture.
- The Story: "When our warehouse team improves Dispatch Time (their metric), our customers are happier, which improves our NPS (the service team's metric). Happier customers buy from us again and tell their friends, which lowers our CAC (the marketing team's metric) and increases overall Revenue (the company's metric)."
- The Dashboard: Create a simple, visual dashboard (this can be on a shared screen or in a weekly email) that tracks these key metrics. Everyone should be able to see, at a glance, how the team is performing against its goals. This turns business into a game that everyone knows how to play, and everyone knows the score.
3. Teach Financial Literacy
Don't just share the numbers; teach your team what they mean. In your team meetings, take five minutes to explain a business concept. What is the difference between revenue and profit? What is Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)? Why is cash flow the oxygen of the business?
When you empower your team with this knowledge, they start to think like owners. The marketing team will start to think about the profitability of their campaigns, not just the creative. The operations team will look for ways to reduce waste because they understand its impact on the bottom line. This is how you build a commercially savvy culture.
How Transparency Fuels Culture, Influence, and Growth
This brings us back to the heart of Sally's questions. When you implement this strategic transparency, you are doing more than just sharing data.
- You Build a Culture of Ownership: When people have a number they are responsible for and can see how it impacts the company, they stop feeling like employees and start feeling like partners. They take initiative. They solve problems. They care.
- You Magnify Your Influence as a Leader: True leadership influence is not derived from holding secrets, but from bestowing trust. When you trust your team with important information and empower them with knowledge, you earn their respect and their loyalty. You are no longer just the boss; you are the coach.
- You Create an Engine for Growth: This is the ultimate outcome. When every single person on your team is aligned, when they all understand the goals, and when they are all focused on improving their specific metric, the entire business moves forward with a powerful, synchronized momentum. This is how you scale sustainably.
A Conversation for Every Ambitious Founder
Our full conversation on the podcast was a fantastic, real-time workshop of these ideas. We took Sally's hugely successful business, SWIISH, and talked through how these principles could be applied to fuel their next chapter of growth. To hear from a founder of her calibre, asking these vulnerable and vital questions, is an incredible lesson in leadership.
From Gatekeeper to Guide
The role of a founder in a growing business must evolve. You must transition from being the gatekeeper of all information to being the guide who provides the team with the map and the compass they need to navigate the journey.
Strategic transparency is that map. It is not about opening up the entire company bank account. It is about giving each person a clear, measurable understanding of how their contribution matters. It's about trusting them, empowering them, and uniting them around a shared definition of what it means to win.
When you get this right, you don't just build a successful business. You build an inspired team. And an inspired team can achieve absolutely anything.
What is one metric you could start sharing with your team tomorrow that would give them a greater sense of ownership and impact?
