Hide n’ Seek in Your Business

When I was a kid, we played a game called Hide n’ Seek.

With all the advances in technology, I’m not sure kids still play it.

I hope so. It was simple and fun.

When I first became a consultant some 40 years ago I found it curious that every single business I went to help, there was staff still playing this game.

But they were mostly playing the hide part, and I had to seek.

I have written articles on transparency and authenticity as mostly a lot of hyperbole or marketing buzzwords, because of course if you are hiding shit, you cannot possibly be transparent or authentic.

But each of us from as far back as we can recall have this errant piece of DNA chain that sometimes gets tweaked, and we default to the Hide Gene. You know, tape test answers inside your shirt sleeve. Write the hard shit in cryptic code on your wrist or hand. Or in an extreme case, excuse yourself to go to the restroom, pull the note out you stuffed in your sock, and recall what the hell happened to Helen of Troy. That essay counted for almost half your grade. Hence, you had to go all Stealth Mode to the Restroom.

Hiding and cryptic code were a survival mode.

Problem is, those DNA chains looked all grand and glorious in those blue and red DNA models in your biology class, but no one ever deconstructed those bad boys to update your Hide Genes.

So employees, staff, Executive VP’s and yes, even CEO’s hide shit.

And the problem is, hiding is actually a misnomer.

Here’s what Merriam Webster defines as hiding: Hide: to conceal from sight; prevent from being seen or discovered.

Here’s the deal: When you were a teenage boy with runaway hormones, you might have tried to hide a Playboy under your mattress. Or insert one between your sports magazines stacked in your closet. You know, to hide them from your Mom.

See that fits, right? “To conceal from sight; prevent from being seen or discovered.”

Ummmm...that means that Mom’s sight is the thing one is trying to prevent, correct? Since she’s the one being concealed from, her hat then is to find it right? I mean you’re not hiding it from Chuck Norris.

That’s why hiding is just silliness. It’s just a game, really. While cleaning your room, your Mom’s sight includes the whole x-ray band, does it not? Probably the Infrared band as well, because she hones in on Miss November like a heat-seeking missile and lifts up your mattress first thing.

I mean that's within her job description, yes?

Flash forward to your business.

You have people, sometimes your best people like Greg, who is trying to conceal from sight that he is in fact not working on that RFP, but is watching a video of Ally & Megan from Marketing, twerking at Freddie’s while knocking back shots.

That’s not exactly thee Request For Proposal you hoped he was working on, right?

See, that’s why all this talk of transparency in many cases is just jive talk. Those guys in the DNA Design Department had deadlines too. And despite staying up late amped up on Red Bull and Cheetos, they hid shit to make their deadlines. As a result, your impulse is to hide that magazine or even your own conduct in order “to conceal from sight; prevent from being seen or discovered.”

The truth is, and this get’s missed by many senior-level executives, the Ally & Megan video is not the issue. Greg could have been checking his Fantasy Football standings.

What the person is doing is not the point. If you upbraid them for their doingness, you just become another version of the person who grounded them for hiding the Playboy.

It’s not about Miss November.

It’s about why they abdicated their own personal integrity vs. the urge to hide.

When you hear someone come clean or admit a mistake, there’s a certain amount of collective humbleness that enters your soul.

You think to yourself, “Wow, that took some balls for Greg to admit he was fucking off.” And it works reverse-wise. If you’re in the meeting when Greg gets called on the carpet and he does this “brilliant” job of B.S.ing the CEO, you and all the people at that table feel this tiny twang of guilt because by proxy you have been complicit in the hide n’ seek game.

Truth can breathe. When you tell it, you can breathe.

When you hide shit, you become captive to your own-sleight-of-hand, and that’s not magic. That’s a trick-gone-bad that eats at your own personal integrity and takes the collective soul of the company down a notch.

When your boss unexpectedly walks into your office, and you nervously click off that YouTube video, instead of acting like you were just putting the finishing touches on that RFP, my advice is simply these three words:

Don’t. Hide. Shit.

For a free phone consultation to discuss your business needs, please feel free to contact me directly at 303-641-6647 or by email at daveworthen@gmail.com