Radical Transparency Operating System
Share every metric with every employee to put everyone's brains on the challenge, not just their hands
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 94%
Default to sharing every bit of company information — paying accounts, churn, signups, conversion — with all employees via always-on office dashboards and daily numbers. The goal is a sense of deep partnership so problems get spotted by everyone, not carried alone by leadership. As a public company, preserve this by putting product managers on scheduled 10b5-1 stock-sale plans so they can still see the data.
Origin
A conviction of Daniel Lereya and the monday.com founders since the 'Pulse' pre-IPO days, held against explicit advice from family members and, later, bankers and lawyers who said a public company can't display financials at the entrance.
Core principles
- 01Withholding information makes a leader carry weight alone — 'the dark side of the moon'
- 02For the right, talented people, seeing the data creates deep partnership rather than demoralization
- 03You want everyone's brains on the challenge, not one centralized brain and many working hands
- 04Sharing removes the constant 'can I share this or not' burden — it's a relief
- 05Transparency focuses everyone on the company's real KPIs because they see what leadership cares about
How to run it
- 1
Start with a daily company numbers post
For a young startup, share daily company numbers — paying accounts, upgrades, downgrades, churn, signups — with everyone. This takes about an hour to set up and immediately changes how people see their role.
Pro tip Do it while you're small; there's virtually no disadvantage beyond the fear itself, and the relief of not gatekeeping is worth it.
Watch out People are afraid something bad in the numbers will demoralize the team — Lereya's experience is the opposite for the right people.
- 2
Put the numbers on office dashboards
Buy a TV, mount it, and let 'what do we show on this TV?' start the conversation. Display company goals and per-team metrics on screens across the office.
Pro tip Add sounds on meaningful events (monday.com played a Simpsons 'million dollars' clip on a new paying account, a tick on a new signup) so wins become part of the company's cadence and everyone lives them.
- 3
Let everyone surface problems from the shared data
With metrics visible everywhere, anyone can flag an anomaly ('what happened to the conversion?'). Many of monday.com's discovered challenges came from non-executives noticing shifts.
- 4
Engineer around public-company constraints
When you IPO and can't show financials openly, don't abandon transparency — build the logistics to preserve it. monday.com built an internal app ('Monday morning') with a company-wide Part A and a role-gated confidential Part B.
Pro tip Put roles that genuinely need the data (product managers) on 10b5-1 scheduled-sale plans so they can keep seeing numbers without trading on material information.
Watch out This is real logistical work (many 10b5-1 plans) — treat it as worth it, not as a reason to close the books.
In the wild
Pre-IPO, even interview candidates walking into monday.com's office saw a live dashboard of paying accounts, daily churn, and signups. Family members warned Lereya this was a mistake. When the company went public, bankers said the entrance dashboard had to go — but rather than let go of transparency, monday.com built an internal app and enrolled PMs in 10b5-1 auto-sell stock plans.
→ Nearly four years public, monday.com still shares as much as it can; PMs keep access to the numbers they need, and Lereya credits this shared-brain transparency as a main driver of the business.
Common mistakes
Gatekeeping data to 'protect' the team
The common instinct — hide bad numbers so people aren't demoralized — leaves leaders isolated and denies the team the context to spot and solve problems. Lereya found the opposite: sharing builds partnership and distributes problem-detection.
Dropping transparency the moment it gets hard (IPO)
Treating going public as a reason to stop sharing forfeits a core business driver. The fix is to engineer compliant mechanisms (role-gated internal apps, 10b5-1 plans), not to abandon the principle.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and people leaders building culture at an early-to-growth startup who want distributed ownership of company metrics
Not ideal for
Organizations whose staff aren't trusted or aligned enough that shared bad news would trigger panic rather than partnership, or contexts with strict regulatory limits on data access
From the transcript
“we actually shared every bit of information with our employees”
“we really want everyone's brains in the challenge and not just one centralized brain and a lot of working hands”
“I love to call it the dark side of the moon”
“if you are product manager at Monday you are signing like a 10b5 program for selling your stocks”
“you buy a TV, you put it on the wall, you start a conversation due to it”
From the episode
Inside monday.com’s transformation: radical transparency, impact over output, and their path to $1B ARR
Daniel Lereya (Chief Product and Technology Officer)