You Can't Coordinate What You Can't See

You can’t coordinate what you can’t see.

Multi-agency work collapses when people operate on different information, different timelines, or different definitions of what “done” means. Transparency isn’t a courtesy in stakeholder alignment. It’s structural. Without it, you’re not coordinating. You’re running parallel efforts that occasionally intersect.

I’ve observed a pattern across organizations. Leaders hold information back because they think it gives them leverage or control. What it actually does is guarantee that when things go wrong, no one else has the context to help. They’ve traded short-term positioning for long-term isolation.

Real coordination requires everyone to work from the same picture.

That doesn’t mean everyone needs all information. It means everyone needs access to the information that affects their decisions. If Agency A is making resource commitments based on a timeline that Agency B changed three weeks ago but didn’t share, that’s not a coordination problem. That’s a transparency failure.

The excuse is usually about not wanting to create confusion or alarm. The reality is more complicated. Sometimes leaders withhold information because they’re not sure what it means yet. Sometimes they’re protecting turf. Sometimes they genuinely think the information isn’t relevant to others.

But stakeholders are capable of handling ambiguity. They’re not capable of handling surprises that result from information they should have had weeks ago.

Here’s what happens when transparency fails. Two agencies start a joint initiative. Agency A knows their budget timeline shifted but doesn’t mention it because “it might get resolved.” Agency B builds their staffing plan around the original timeline. Three months in, Agency A announces they can’t fund their portion until next fiscal year. Agency B has already hired people.

That’s not a budget problem. That’s a trust problem disguised as a budget problem.

Transparency in coordination doesn’t mean broadcasting every internal discussion. It means establishing what information is decision-critical for whom, and making sure it flows. When you hold back what people need to do their part effectively, you’re not leading coordination. You’re performing it while everyone else routes around you.

There’s a test for this. When something changes in your piece of the coordination, who needs to know? How quickly? Through what channel? If your answer is “I’ll tell people when it’s finalized,” you’re probably waiting too long.

Information doesn’t flow naturally in multi-agency work. Different organizations have different systems, different cultures around sharing, different assumptions about what’s important. You have to build the flow deliberately.

The uncomfortable part is that transparency requires admitting when you don’t have answers yet. It means saying “here’s what changed, here’s what we know, here’s what we’re still figuring out” instead of waiting until you can present a complete picture. Most coordination failures happen in that gap between when something changes and when someone decides the information is “ready” to share.

Speed matters more than polish in coordination transparency. Stakeholders can work with incomplete information if they know it’s incomplete. They can’t work with information they don’t have.

The question isn’t whether transparency creates short-term discomfort. It does. The question is whether withholding information creates bigger problems later. It always does.

If you’re hiding what you know to maintain control, you’ve already lost control. Real authority in coordination comes from being the person everyone trusts to share what they need to know, even when it’s complicated or unflattering.

Coordination built on selective transparency isn’t coordination. It’s a performance with an expiration date.