What Happened When We Stopped Hiding the Data

For a long time, we followed the classic playbook: only leadership gets access to live data.

Why?

Because there was this fear.

Fear that if people saw how much their teammates were working or not working, they’d get competitive or upset.
Fear that it would lead to judgment.
Fear that people would get stressed, distracted, or just flat-out confused by numbers they weren’t “meant” to interpret.

I didn’t buy it. I never did.

These are professionals. Grownups. Smart people we hired because we believed in their judgment and their potential. So why gatekeep the very information that could help them understand what’s happening and do their jobs better?

Eventually, we pushed back. We opened it all up.

Not just their own time entries. Not just vague charts in a slide deck at the quarterly review.
We gave them real access daily, dynamic, accurate data on:

• Their personal availability

• Team-level resourcing

• Forecasts and capacity gaps

• Who was overbooked

• Who was on the bench

• How it all rolled up to project health

It was live. It was open. It was theirs.

And what happened next was a shift, subtle at first, then undeniable.

First, the “why” behind every tough call started to make sense.
People weren’t guessing anymore. They saw the real trade-offs in action. Why someone got pulled into a new project. Why another person stayed on a slower-moving one. Why something got delayed. It wasn’t incompetence. It wasn’t favoritism. It was reality and they could see it for themselves.

Second, the emotional temperature dropped.
Before, people were frustrated. They didn’t understand why things felt messy. Why timelines slipped. Why someone else got staffed on the cool project. Now? They had context. They stopped making assumptions. The judgment faded.

And third, probably the most important, people stepped up.
They saw what needed doing. They asked better questions. They offered help when others were underwater. They made smarter decisions about their own time. Because they weren’t in the dark anymore. They were part of the system, not reacting to it.

And here’s what that did:

• Engagement went up. People felt trusted.

• Utilization went up. Work got more balanced.

• Client satisfaction went up. Fewer surprises. More control.

• Team trust went up. Resourcing became a team sport—not a black box.

The irony is: the very thing we were afraid of the stress, the noise, the overwhelm, none of it happened.
Because when people have context, they’re less reactive. Not more.

They stop wondering.
They stop whispering.
They stop wasting energy on theories.

They just… work.
Aligned. Informed. Focused.

That doesn’t mean it was perfect. It never is. There were still tensions, tough conversations, edge cases where someone misread something or overreacted. But those were exceptions, not the norm. The baseline got better.

Because transparency does something powerful:
It replaces noise with clarity.
And clarity helps people make better choices.

That’s what this was always about. Not dumping data. But unlocking better decisions at every level.

So if you're running a team and wondering whether to keep the data “safe” at the top or share it more widely, consider this:

They’re already thinking about it.
They already have questions.
And they’re capable of understanding more than we often give them credit for.

So show them.
Teach them.
Trust them.

And most of the time, they’ll rise to meet it.

Richard