Why keeping secrets becomes the norm inside private agencies

I've experienced a few environments where there are very clearly unwritten rules about what you can and can't know. I've come to realise that many business models, not all, really do rely on secrecy.

Usually nobody sits you down and says that. You just pick it up.

You learn pretty quickly which questions are normal, and which ones make people shift in their seat a bit. I’m sure you’d like some examples of this, so off the top of my head…

What the client is actually paying for your time.
What you are being paid compared to others around you.
How much margin is being pulled out of the work before it gets anywhere near the person doing it.
What the company is invoicing compared to what is being delivered.
Why staff might be asked to allocate time more generously for certain clients.
How much scope creep is quietly absorbed just to keep things moving.

To be fair, business owners are entitled to keep commercial information private. Not every number needs to be open book, and I do not think every agency or consultancy is operating in some cynical way.

But I also think most people who have spent enough time in private agencies know this sort of thing is fairly commonplace. We all know it exists, and most of the time we quietly agree not to say it out loud.

Part of the reason is obvious. Once people know what is being charged, where the money is going, and how the work is really being packaged up, they start doing the maths.

That is when people begin asking awkward but perfectly reasonable questions about fairness, value, and who exactly the model is built around.

That thinking sits pretty close to Craft’s philosophy.

We think practitioners should be much closer to the centre of those decisions. That does not mean every commercial detail needs to be public, but it does mean the people creating the value should not be the last to understand how it is being priced, sold and shared.