# Can you use transparency to earn enough trust to be opaque? # Can you use transparency to earn enough trust to be opaque There are some government programs that make a lot of sense to be secret and most people are ok with that. This needs a strong consensus about what is correctly opaque. One person on the inside who disagrees with opacity level changes everything. [[Opacity is important to DARPA’s outlier success]] (and to innovation organizations in general [[Principles for Innovation Orgs]].) [[Fully open online discussions are low quality because of trust and context]] but perhaps you could create a ratcheting back-and-forth between openness and engagement? In [[Mark McGranaghan Email 17 Sep 2020]] Mark suggested that perhaps *more* transparency could actually build trust. The suggestion was targeted at funding but donations and trust seem intimately tied together. What this would look like might be intense transparency up to the point where you say “and this is opaque, trust us.” Perhaps tactically you could use [[Podcasts are a way to build trust at scale]] in order to justify opacity ### Related * [[When trusted hierarchies metastasize they become inefficient bureaucracy or dictatorship]] * [[Loyalty thresholds depend on your trust in a person and the size of the breach]] * [[Luke Durant Conversation 29 Sep 2020]] * [[Formal process lets people outside the organization trust in the process instead of the people]] * [[The more trust an institution has, the less it needs formal process]] * [[How do you operationalize trust?]] * [[Trust is transitive]] * [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Can+you+use+transparency+to+earn+enough+trust+to+be+opaque) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Can+you+use+transparency+to+earn+enough+trust+to+be+opaque)