Page 236 - Performance Leadership

Chapter 12 Performance Networks • 225

There cannot be collaboration without information exchange. Informa-
tion is an asset, to be deployed and optimized like other assets, such as
capital and materials. Information should be shared as much as possible
to optimize relationships, knowledge transfer, and traffic of other assets
as efficiently as possible between all stakeholders in the performance net-
work. By sharing information, the stakeholders can identify opportuni-
ties and inhibitors (bottlenecks) in the performance network and can
then move from suboptimization to optimization.
There are many examples of business enterprises that changed their
industry by aggressively adopting transparency and raising the bar for
their competition. Transparency affects most of our stakeholder rela-
tionships, such as society (sustainability reporting, extensively discussed
in Chapter 10), our suppliers, shareholders, and customers. Here are
a few examples:

• Shareholders. There is no direct causal link between the
timeliness of external reporting and the valuation of the overall
company. However, it is commonly accepted that the two factors
are somehow related. Enterprises that report quickly come across
as decisive, shareholders are better informed about them than
about enterprises that report more slowly. Furthermore, early and
accurate reporting is a sign of having good controls in place, one
of the main targets of corporate governance regulations and
guidelines. Organizations that invest in shareholder transparency
show they are good managers of the capital supplied by the
shareholders.
• Suppliers. Many organizations go through a supplier
rationalization exercise and, as a part of it, create supplier
scorecards. In the beginning these are designed to make the
relationship with the suppliers more objective, as part of an
effort to decrease the number of suppliers the organization deals
with. The suppliers that score best will see their purchasing
share increase. Others will see it decrease, or they will be let go.
At first most suppliers are skeptical, as they think the scorecards
will be used to squeeze even greater discounts out of them.
However, these attitudes tend to change. Supplier scorecards
improve relationships. Performance indicators help in pointing