The April issue of Wired Magazine contains an interesting story called “The See-Through CEO,” which is very relevant to the concept of authenticity that our agency believes is at the heart of future communications.

The sub-title of the article states, “Fire the publicist. Go off message. Let our employees blab and blog.” While, as the head of a PR firm, I am forced to take issue with those specific actions, the message behind them has a lot of merit.

The reporter, Clive Thompson, cites a number of examples of “radical transparency,” where companies literally share everything about their business, including complaints about competitors, profit margins on particular products, and specific corporate strategies. Obviously, this is not a tactic that works for every corporation. Secrecy is still a critical tool in the intensely competitive marketplace and the element of surprise can be highly effective in building excitement for a new product.

But there are many business situations where it makes a lot of sense to reach out to employees, customers and critics to explain how a company feels about a specific issue or why it has chosen a specific course of action. And the internet provides the perfect tool to the communicative CEO who wants to tell his story in the most direct, immediate and transparent way.

The concept of “radical transparency” probably sounds a bit “too radical” for most businesses but in reality it is just an euphemism for authenticity –- telling the truth using real words that people can understand. There is nothing radical about that.