Visibility vs Trust
Everyone’s obsessed with culture these days. The modern fantasy is a company that runs entirely on “trust.” No hierarchy, no metrics, no accountability — just good vibes and radical transparency. A utopia powered by love, Slack emojis, and unlimited annual leave.
It’s bullshit.
100% trust sounds beautiful, but it doesn’t work. Because people are people. And people, when left completely to their own devices, will naturally do more of the stuff they enjoy and quietly ignore the stuff they don’t. That’s not laziness, it’s biology. We’re wired for dopamine, not discipline.
You can’t build a company on wishful thinking about human nature. If you remove all visibility, you don’t get empowerment — you get drift. Suddenly “autonomy” means “no one’s watching” and “ownership” becomes “I’ll get to it when I feel like it.”
I’ve seen it a hundred times. Everyone’s lovely, no one’s accountable, and somehow the boring but essential things — documentation, follow-up, testing, admin — never happen. Because they’re not sexy, and no one wants to do them.
Now, on the other extreme, you’ve got the psychos. The ones who don’t trust anyone to breathe without approval. They measure everything, track everything, and install software to detect mouse movement because God forbid someone pauses for 30 seconds to think. These people don’t lead teams, they run surveillance states.
Their employees live in fear. Every calendar entry has to be justified. Every minute has to be billable. It’s corporate paranoia disguised as “high standards.” The output isn’t better, it’s just busier. People get creative about looking productive, not being productive.
Both extremes are ridiculous.
100% trust without visibility is chaos.
100% visibility without trust is tyranny.
The answer, as always, is somewhere in the middle. Trust people to do their jobs, but make the work visible. Not so you can spy on them, but so that everyone knows what’s happening, where the gaps are, and what matters most.
Visibility doesn’t have to mean control. It means clarity. It’s knowing what’s on everyone’s plate so you can help each other prioritise. It’s making commitments public so there’s gentle pressure to follow through. It’s what keeps good intentions from dissolving into procrastination.
Healthy visibility isn’t about catching people out. It’s about making sure their effort connects to something real. It’s accountability without micromanagement.
Hippie culture merchants will tell you that “trust fixes everything.” It doesn’t. Trust plus visibility fixes things. Because it lets people focus on the work that matters while still knowing they’re part of a system that depends on them.
And let’s be honest — we all work a little better when we know someone’s paying attention.
If you want real performance, don’t aim for blind trust or total control. Build a culture where trust is earned, visibility is normal, and results speak for themselves.
Trust plus visibility equals solid. Everything else is a cult or a prison.
