Watching a Cabinet Meeting and Thinking About "Open Management" in IT Organizations — Questions a Startup CTO Asks Himself
Watching a Cabinet Meeting and Thinking About “Open Management” in IT Organizations — Questions a Startup CTO Asks Himself
Seen through the eyes of an organizational operator rather than a politician, what is there to learn from a publicly broadcast cabinet meeting? A CTO’s growth is a journey from technical depth to organizational breadth.
Opening: A Cabinet Meeting More Entertaining Than Netflix
The first time I watched one of President Lee Jae-myung’s open cabinet meetings, I was honestly surprised. For the first time in constitutional history, a cabinet meeting was live-streamed in real time, with ministers fielding impromptu questions on current issues. In the comments stream, citizens fact-checked on the fly, and reactions poured in: “more entertaining than Netflix.” Underprepared briefings were publicly pressed, and the public watched the entire process unfold.
I watched these moments not through a political lens but through the lens of an organizational operator. “Could we run a meeting like this in our company?” As a startup CTO I asked myself how thoroughly I share the reasoning behind decisions with my team, and how transparent our meetings actually are. That question became the starting point of this piece.
1. What I Saw in the Cabinet Meetings — Mechanisms of Transparency
On July 29, 2025, the 33rd cabinet meeting was broadcast live for roughly 90 minutes on KTV and YouTube. Later, at the 49th cabinet meeting, the entire deliberation and voting process was opened to the public.
Three things stood out.
First, real-time disclosure. The proceedings were delivered to the public unedited. Until then, cabinet meetings released only outcomes — the process was a black box.
Second, the intervention of collective intelligence. Citizens fact-checked in real time through the comments. The president himself noted that “in many cases, the public pointed out and corrected inadequate ministry briefings live in the comments.” Not just the people in the room, but experts and citizens outside the room, vetted the quality of the briefings.
Third, accountable administration with rewards and consequences. Officials whose briefings were poorly prepared or factually shaky were challenged publicly, and “the public sees all of it” was hammered home. The result functioned as a powerful incentive to raise briefing quality.
This is, of course, a double-edged sword. Concerns about self-censorship, about “briefings that play to the camera,” about the chilling of candid statements — these critiques have already been voiced. What is worth noting, though, is that this transparency philosophy is not a one-off. It runs in a straight line from his time as Seongnam mayor — when he opened his office to a 24-hour camera feed — through his term as Gyeonggi governor and now into the presidency.
So: what would it look like applied to an IT organization?
2. Companies Already Doing It — Cases of Transparent Management in Tech
“Transparent management” is not idealism. There are companies already practicing it, and they have turned it into competitive advantage.
GitLab — “If It’s Not Documented, It Doesn’t Exist”
GitLab’s public handbook runs to 2,700 pages. Everything about how the organization is run — hiring processes, compensation, decision-making principles, the agenda format for the CEO’s 1:1s — functions as a Single Source of Truth.
Every meeting requires an agenda; without one, the meeting does not happen. During meetings, shared documents are written in real time, and recordings are published on YouTube. The reason 2,000+ remote workers across 67 countries can operate from the same context is this documentation culture.
Amazon — The Six-Page Memo Culture
At Amazon, PowerPoint is banned. Every proposal is written as a narrative document of six pages or fewer. The first 20–30 minutes of every meeting are spent silently reading it.
Jeff Bezos’s explanation is sharp: “We know nobody is going to read it ahead of time, so we read it in the meeting.” The point is that decisions are made on the quality of the information, not the charisma of the presenter. Before a product launches, a PR/FAQ — a mock press release and a customer FAQ — is written first, forcing customer-centric thinking from the outset.
Netflix — “Context, Not Control”
Netflix’s culture memo is well known. Leaders provide strategic context — strategy, metrics, plans — and teams decide for themselves. A leader’s role is to provide context, not exert control.
What’s especially worth noting is the “Sunshining” culture. Leaders publicly share their own mistakes first. That creates psychological safety on the team and lays the groundwork for a culture that does not hide failure. The 2024 update to the culture memo doubled down on “People over Process.”
Bridgewater — The Dot Collector
Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates is famous for “Radical Transparency.” During meetings, an iPad app called the Dot Collector lets colleagues rate one another’s contributions in real time across dimensions like assertiveness, openness, and composure.
Decisions are made in a “Believability-weighted” fashion: those with track records in the relevant domain get more weight on their opinions. A 24-year-old junior can give feedback to the CEO. What matters is the quality of the idea, not the rank.
Toss — A Korean Case
Domestically, Toss (Viva Republica) is worth a closer look. Information equality — equal access to information regardless of rank. Its core principle is minimal management and maximum autonomy: maximum trust given to the best talent.
That said, light casts shadow. Former employees consistently cite the burnout risk — the cultural pressure of “speed equals competitiveness” — as a side effect that must be discussed alongside the transparency and autonomy.
Comparison
| Company | Core Principle | What a CTO Should Learn |
|---|---|---|
| GitLab | Documentation first | Open meeting notes and decision records to the entire team |
| Amazon | Narrative thinking | Use documents, not slides, to test the logic |
| Netflix | Provide context | Don’t hand down decisions — share the reasoning |
| Bridgewater | Structured feedback | Systematize feedback |
| Toss | Information equality | Eliminate rank-based information gaps |
3. Questions a CTO Should Ask Himself
This is the crux of the piece. There is a gap between knowing the cases and actually practicing them. The first step in closing that gap is asking the right questions.
A. Questions About Transparency
“Does my team know why I made that decision?”
Without sharing the reasoning behind a decision, the team executes but does not internalize it. Execution without buy-in kills creativity and produces, at the end, an organization that “just does what it’s told.” That is why Amazon enforces the six-page memo — when the logic of the decision is in writing, everyone can understand the “why.”
“Do I share failures, or only successes?”
Netflix’s Sunshining is not merely a virtue. When leaders share failures first, team members read the signal: “It’s safe to fail here.” This is the core of what Amy Edmondson calls psychological safety. Under a leader who only shares wins, failures get hidden, and hidden failures come back as bigger failures.
“Do meeting notes exist? Can anyone access them?”
“If it’s not documented, it doesn’t exist.” — GitLab Handbook
If a meeting happened but nothing was recorded, that meeting exists only in the memory of the attendees. Memory distorts. People who weren’t there lose the context. Writing notes and publishing them is not a cost; it’s an investment.
B. Questions About Running the Organization
“Can my team run without me?”
Brie Wolfson (formerly Stripe, Meta) put it this way: “A healthy team thrives independently.” If the team grinds to a halt when the CTO goes on vacation, the problem isn’t the team — it’s the CTO. An organization that depends on people rather than systems does not scale.
“How much do I understand beyond technology?”
CTO Academy is blunt: “The biggest mistake new leaders make is staying inside the silo of technology.” A CTO who doesn’t understand finance, HR, or business strategy is a technical leader, not a business leader. Just as ministers in an open cabinet meeting must answer questions across the policy spectrum, a CTO must see beyond technology.
“Can every employee see our OKRs?”
At Google, every OKR — from CEO down to IC (Individual Contributor) — is visible company-wide. Anyone can see how their work connects to the bigger picture. When OKRs are closed off, team members lose the meaning of their own work.
C. Questions About Growth
“Am I still unable to let go of the code?”
“You need to step back from the code and find a balance between what the whole team needs and your technical commitments.” — Camille Fournier, The Manager’s Path
There’s nothing wrong with a CTO writing code. But if you’re so buried in code that you’re missing the team’s growth, the organization’s direction, and the big picture of technical strategy, that’s a growth stall.
“Have I accepted that my output = the team’s output?”
“A manager’s output is the sum of the output of the organization under his supervision and influence.” — Andy Grove, High Output Management
This is the hardest transition for a CTO. Accepting that what I personally built is not my output — what my team built is. Without making that shift, a CTO stays a “really good developer” forever.
D. Questions About Culture
“Can my team members comfortably disagree with me?”
In Amy Edmondson’s model of psychological safety, the highest stage is Challenger Safety — the safety to challenge the status quo and voice dissent. Most organizations are stuck at stages one and two (inclusion and learning). Team members already know what happens when you push back against the CTO.
“Can I say ‘I don’t know’?”
“Showing vulnerability is not weakness; it is courage.” — Brené Brown, Dare to Lead
Under a leader who pretends to know everything, team members stop asking questions. A leader who can say “I don’t know” creates a culture where team members can say “I don’t know” too.
“What happens in our organization when someone reports a failure?”
This is the lesson from the open cabinet meetings. When reprimand comes first, reporting gets distorted. Publicly pressing an inadequate briefing increases tension in the short term, but in the long term it can encourage “safe lies.” That’s why the first response to a failure report should not be “Why did it fail?” but “Thank you for telling me quickly.”
4. The Shadow of Transparency — Some Doors Should Stay Closed
It’s easy to celebrate transparency. But a balanced view is essential. Too much transparency can damage an organization.
McKinsey — “The Dark Side of Transparency”
McKinsey warns: “Excessive information sharing creates information overload and legitimizes endless debate and post-hoc criticism of senior management decisions.” It documents a case where a CEO introduced a transparent bonus allocation system, only to see perceptions of fairness deteriorate and trust in the employer drop. Disclosure without context generates not trust but confusion.
Deloitte 2024 — “The Transparency Paradox”
Deloitte’s 2024 research surfaces an interesting paradox. 86% of leaders say “the more transparent we are, the more trust we generate,” but the actual dynamic is far messier. Only 37% of workers trust their organization’s use of data. The intent of transparency and its actual effect diverge widely.
Dr. Michelle Rozen’s Warning
“When leaders share every uncertainty, internal disagreement, and incomplete scenario, they are pushing volatility downstream.”
“Transparency + lack of context → increased cognitive load → reduced clarity → degraded performance.”
The core principle: “Leadership is not about saying everything. It is about saying what stabilizes, aligns, and moves the organization forward.”
Tying It Back to the Open Cabinet Meetings
The opposition criticized the open cabinet meetings: “Pop-quizzing officials and publicly humiliating them when they fail.” The same dynamic exists in companies — public reprimands distort reporting. The Information Disclosure Center recommended: “What is needed is institutional guarantees, not a one-off.” Companies likewise must build transparency into systems, not into a leader’s personal style.
The Principle of Appropriate Transparency
To summarize:
- Disclosing everything ≠ transparency.
- Sharing the “why” = transparency.
- Psychological safety first; disclosure second.
- Sustainability requires institutional support, not the inclinations of a particular leader.
5. Five Things You Can Do Starting Monday
Enough theory. Move to execution.
1. Add “why” to every meeting.
For every decision, leave a one-page rationale and make it accessible to the whole team. A miniature Amazon six-pager. A single paragraph is enough at first: “We chose X. The reasons are A, B, C. We rejected Y and Z for these reasons.” That one paragraph creates buy-in.
2. Share a failure once a month.
Like Netflix’s “Sunshining,” when the leader publicly admits to a mistake first, psychological safety on the team rises. Add a “What I got wrong this month” segment to monthly all-hands. It feels awkward at first. But when the leader shows vulnerability first, team members stop hiding their own failures.
3. The “Can my team run without me?” test.
Delegate decision-making for a week. If the team stalls, you are depending on people rather than systems. This is not a CTO failure; it is a growth metric. The place the team stalls is exactly the place to systematize.
4. Open OKRs across the company.
When every objective — from CEO to IC — is transparent as it is at Google, everyone can see how their work connects to the bigger picture. The productivity gap between team members who know “why I’m doing this” and those who don’t is large.
5. Record meetings (selectively).
You don’t need to record every meeting the way GitLab does. Just recording quarterly strategy meetings and key decision-making meetings is enough to let absentees catch up on context. The purpose of recording is shared context, not surveillance.
Closing: Open Doors
Just as live-streaming cabinet meetings is not perfect, open management at a company will never be perfect either. Praise and criticism coexisting is to be expected. What matters is the attempt itself.
A CTO’s growth is a journey from technical depth to organizational breadth. As Andy Grove said, the starting point is accepting that “my output = the team’s output.”
What matters is not “perfect transparency” but “intentional openness.” You do not have to open every door. But doors with no reason to be closed should be opened.
One final question:
Where is the first door you need to open in your organization?
References
- Amy Edmondson, The Fearless Organization — the four-stage model of psychological safety
- Brené Brown, Dare to Lead — vulnerability and courage in leaders
- Andy Grove, High Output Management — “a manager’s output = the organization’s output”
- Camille Fournier, The Manager’s Path — the growth path of a technical leader
- GitLab Handbook — the 2,700-page public handbook
- Amazon 6-Pager / PR FAQ — narrative-driven decision documentation
- Netflix Culture Memo (2024) — “Context, Not Control,” Sunshining
- Bridgewater Associates, Principles — radical transparency and the Dot Collector
- Toss (Viva Republica) — information equality and minimal management
- McKinsey, “The Dark Side of Transparency” — the backfire of excessive transparency
- Deloitte, “The Transparency Paradox” (2024) — the gap between transparency intent and effect
- Dr. Michelle Rozen — leadership and the principle of appropriate transparency
- CTO Academy — escaping the technical silo as a CTO
- Press coverage of Lee Jae-myung’s open cabinet meetings (Gyeonggi Ilbo, Seoul Shinmun, Information Disclosure Center)