One Truth, Open to Everyone

Definition

An information policy in which everyone in the organization sees the same real numbers at the same time, with no internal filtering, no "internal profit taking," and no privileged view reserved for higher levels. The premise is that restricting information flow — the default instinct of a control-oriented hierarchy — is itself what produces bad decisions and manipulated reporting, because withheld or delayed information is what gaming exploits.

In the Book

Chapter 2 describes Jan Wallander's insistence at Svenska Handelsbanken on "only one set of numbers, or 'one truth,' with no internal profit taking," arguing this was inseparable from the bank's decentralization: sharing and cooperation between branches "were no longer choices. They happened automatically" once everyone worked from the same visible facts. Chapter 7 makes open information the sixth and final principle of radical decentralization, arguing that fast, transparent reporting "promotes ethical behavior" precisely because there is nothing to hide behind — no privileged forecast a manager can quietly revise, no variance that only a superior gets to see before it's explained away. The book connects this directly to the corporate scandals discussed in chapter 1: fixed targets create pressure to misreport, and misreporting is only possible where information can be controlled or delayed on its way up the hierarchy.

Why It Matters

Treating information asymmetry as the enabling condition for both bad decisions and dishonest reporting — rather than treating dishonesty as a personal ethical failure to police after the fact — points at a structural fix instead of a behavioral one: if nobody can see something before everyone else does, there is far less to gain by shading it. The same logic applies wherever a gatekeeper's exclusive early view of data creates temptation, from financial reporting to status updates that reach a manager before they reach the team that produced the number.