danielpunkass
danielpunkass

I continue to think the Basecamp analysis is “above my pay grade”, but as a business owner who might eventually hire people, it gives me pause. My naive takeaway is businesses should avoid getting to a point where enacting a “no politics” rule seems like the only solution.

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hjertnes
hjertnes

@danielpunkass it’s a terrible rule, in my experience rules that actually work and give you a good work environment are not about what you can or can’t, and instead about desired behavior

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baldur
baldur

@danielpunkass Everybody focuses on the ill-advised ‘no politics’ rule but nobody really seems to notice that Basecamp went from being an open and trusting workplace to full lockdown in the space of a few days.

They went from:

  1. Obviously feeling free to discuss contentious and complicated topics.
  2. Having considerable autonomy in terms of running a number of employee-led committees, including a diversity and integration committee that had considerable support among staff
  3. Reviews were 360 peer-led performance reviews
  4. Going over and analysing management decisions—treating the bosses like a peer in a 360 review—seems to have been the norm.

Then all of that was taken away in what amounts to a wholesale declaration of no confidence, by the management, of the employees.

And the employees found out about it from a public blog post.

This isn’t a case of a workplace narrowing down its internal topic guidelines. Workplaces should have some guidelines for what is appropriate to discuss and what isn’t. And those should be written in collaboration with the employees to figure out what works best for the particular work that is being done. Useful guidelines are never as broad as ‘no politics’ because that guideline is so obviously unimplementable that it actually means ‘my politics’. They need to be specific. They need to establish boundaries that everybody is comfortable with. They need to explicitly allow for discussions that are necessary for the work and for the emotional health of the workplace. They need to clearly mark as off-limits those topics that harm the health of the workplace.

This is none of that. This was a hissy fit where a couple of founders completely overturned the culture they themselves established over many years, all because they felt deeply uncomfortable about being challenged. Even after the first couple of blog posts, they could have prevented any of the following damage by apologising and committing themselves to writing up new guidelines in collaboration with the employees.

But they didn’t do that because this wasn’t about establishing boundaries or establishing cultural norms. This was about establishing complete control.

Most managers aren’t going to put themselves in this position because they aren’t authoritarian narcissists. A crisis like this at a workplace that size is normally resolved by everybody talking together to establish reasonable boundaries. Often with the help of an organisational psychologist. It gets fixed without the public tantrums and most of the time nobody hears about it unless they were there.

(Disclaimer: my dad is an retired organisational psychologist. This is the sort of work he used to do. 🙂)

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manton
manton

@baldur At the risk of nitpicking only one part... Where does the "employees found out about it from a public blog post” come from? I've heard this twice now but my impression from reviewing the blog posts is that this was discussed and announced internally before Jason's summary in public. (Your larger argument about control is a good point.)

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In reply to
baldur
baldur

@manton This was mentioned by several (now former) Basecamp employees on Twitter.

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lukemperez
lukemperez

@manton @baldur FWIW, I think this might have some of the pieces right, but it's insufficient. I had to wonder why the founders would so abruptly change course. It led me to think that they had internal issues beyond just being challenged. There seems to be a lot more to this than whatever has been reported.

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rnv
rnv

@baldur @danielpunkass This this this exactly this.

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manton
manton

@baldur Could it have been a timing issue, e.g. DHH's internal Basecamp post just wasn't read by everyone yet by the time Jason's public post went up? I feel like the order matters a lot for our impression of events, and we know very little about the other internal Basecamp messages.

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baldur
baldur

@manton When several employees publicly state “I found out about this from Jason Fried’s public blog post” then it’s unambiguously the CEO who’s at fault. He should have ensured that the decisions were adequately communicated to staff before making it public. You can make excuses for him but, at best, those amount to ‘he broke something by accident’. He still broke something, didn’t apologise, and, as CEO, is ultimately responsible no matter what.

He prioritised getting ahead of potential leaks over ensuring good internal communications. No matter how you slice that, that’s pretty irresponsible management right there.

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manton
manton

@baldur To be clear, I'm not making excuses for anyone. I just want to know what happened. 🙂

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baldur
baldur

@manton Sure. I get that impulse. I really do. 🙂

My point is that what they did publicly, even before we started to get reports on what was happening internally, is damning enough. We don’t need to find out what happened because none of it would suddenly make their actions good management. Either they badly mishandled one major crisis or they’ve been badly mismanaging the company for months, if not years.

The only way that their public actions last week weren’t incredibly poor decision-making is if the goal was to get rid of employees in a loud and public way so as to discourage specific types of applicants in the future. Keep the company lean and make sure only yes-people apply in the future.

If that was the goal, then it worked perfectly.

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leeS
leeS

@manton @baldur This is the clearest breakdown of the storyline and future of this I’ve seen. It is a teachable moment for small business owners like me.

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esjewett
esjewett

@baldur Thanks for laying this all out. Really helpful summary and point of view.

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