Transparency Compounds Judgment

People make good decisions in proportion to the context they hold. Rabois pushes transparency further than most: at Square, the material presented to the board was shared with the whole company. Meetings ended with notes distributed so everyone knew what was decided and why.

The objection is always leaks and discomfort. The cost of secrecy is worse: employees inventing their own explanations, duplicated work, and a leadership team that becomes the bottleneck for every decision because only they have the full picture.

Transparency is also what makes delegation safe. You can hand off big decisions only to people who see the same data and hear the same reasoning you do. Context is the raw material of judgment.