How Basecamp Could've Better Handled Political Discourse
Maybe I’m naiive but Basecamp was one of the last companies I could see facing a PR crisis. But here we are.
I’ve been a big fan of co-founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson for a while. I think their books have been a great resource on healthy ways to approach work and they’ve offered some great counter-cultural advice for how much emphasis we place on archaic workplace trends.
Their book Remote gave me great advice on how to best transition into mostly working from my house on a full-time basis. Incredibly practical.
Fried’s TED Talk on why work doesn’t happen at work is worth a watch.
It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy At Work was another great book in terms of being able to draw healthy boundaries while still being an effective teammate. I even wrote about it a couple of years ago. It’s a good book and I still recommend it.
I clearly have held the general workplace views of Basecamp’s leaders in high regard.
It’s Possible To Strongly Disagree With People You Respect
Yet, in the last week, they’ve been hammered in the news and on social media for a new company policy barring societal and political discussions on internal company forums. Fried writes more on his blog about the political point:
Today's social and political waters are especially choppy. Sensitivities are at 11, and every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant. You shouldn't have to wonder if staying out of it means you're complicit, or wading into it means you're a target. These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It's become too much. It's a major distraction. It saps our energy, and redirects our dialog towards dark places.
This statement, if made in a vacuum, tends to be one I agree with. Discourse is increasingly choppy and it’s hard to engage on most subjects in the given moment that doesn’t have some sort of political undertones. Our current overabundance of politics is exhausting.
Going as far as enacting a “no politics” policy? I don’t agree with it. And honestly, it appears that even Fried disagrees with himself in one of the books I’ve mentioned above.
The worst thing you can do is pretend that interpersonal feelings don’t matter. That work should “just be about work.” That’s just ignorant. Humans are humans whether they’re at work or at home.
This contradiction has led to 20+ employees of a ~60 person company resigning from Basecamp in the past week alone. A company lauded for management and culture is facing a crisis because of its culture. Working in PR in my life (especially in the faith-based space for a time), I’ve noticed that often the thing that makes someone famous ultimately plays a huge role in their downfall.
There is a lot of great reporting on the bigger underlying reasons for Basecamp employee dissatisfaction, including the founders really wanting to avoid difficult conversations. Read this bit of in-depth reporting by The Verge and then re-read the initial blog post by Jason Fried and a lot more of the story adds up.
My old boss Mark DeMoss used to tell us that most PR crises are just management issues that become public. This is certainly the case here.
How Could Basecamp Have Handled This Better?
I recognize that I don’t work at Basecamp. I don’t own a company and never have. I haven’t been in a position where I felt the need to make policy decisions like this. It’s easy and risk-free to take the role of armchair quarterback.
I also don’t want to spend time dunking on where they went wrong. There’s enough of that. I do want to throw some thoughts out there on how this could have been navigated more positively.
I truly believe Basecamp could have achieved the results they wanted (reducing toxic political discourse) while minimizing the PR fallout.
These recommendations are based on my own life experience and information gleaned totally on what I’ve read in articles. I totally understand that there’s always more nuance to most stories than what we know.
Have A Core Group of Advisors That Aren’t Owners
Fried and Hansson own Basecamp. As owners, anything they do with the company (within the bounds of the law) is their prerogative to do. It’s their right. But just because you can do something that is legally/morally okay doesn’t mean it’s the right thing.
My former boss used to put decisions through a wisdom test. Not can you do something but more should you do it.
Is it wise to [insert thing here]?
What’s one solution to vet the wisdom of a decision?
Fried and Hansson could have an internal board of sorts. Not a large group but 2-3 other trusted people that they can bounce bigger decisions off of internally. When I worked at DeMoss, even though Mark owned the company, he still had a core group that helped make decisions and advocate on behalf of employees. Even our benefits packages were developed by an independent employee committee (I was part of one).
More importantly, those advisors can help communicate new policies to the company before the founders write a blog post announcing the changes to the world (like what happened here). I realize the public post was an act of transparency to build trust.
Sometimes, transparency without the benefit of additional context will unintentionally breed more distrust. I think that happened here.
Even with the best of intentions, company founders/owners can get into a bubble and not ever feel the full weight of their decisions on the team. That’s where this advisory group could come into play. This wouldn’t eliminate all internal issues at all but could help steer away from PR crises more often. The biggest leaders I’ve seen have issues are ones that did not have strong accountability measures for themselves put in place.
Create A Space For Discourse
Just because your company intranet or Slack channel doesn’t have political discussions, it doesn’t mean it’s not happening within the life of your company. Keeping people off company forums could have employees carrying on those same conversations on private platforms and potentially further alienate those you’re trying to protect.
Not allowing a safe space for employees to discuss their lives could have a downstream affect of creating more sidebar conversations. It could create more cliques which in turn could lead to a more toxic, less trusting work environment. While the intentions here may be noble, the downstream consequences could be worse and harder to manage if something did get serious.
Create Clear Guardrails
The Basecamp leadership has made it clear they won’t budge on the “no politics” policy. If you have a policy like that, you have to make sure the guardrails on expectations are very explicit. How do you police political discussions? What are the consequences of violating it?
Sure, maybe I shouldn’t post a link criticizing X politician from a partisan news source on Slack. Or attack coworkers for their voting preferences.
But what if I was asked what I did that weekend and my response was “my family and I went to a church event.” Is that out of bounds, even if I’m not pushing an ideology?
What if an employee is transgender and offers their preferred pronouns their first week of work? Is that a political statement as well?
What if there is a company dinner but I express preference for vegan menu options because of personal views surrounding animal treatment? Is that political?
What if the owners allow a political candidate to use their office space? Or testify before Congress regarding their big tech opinions? Because both of those things happened. I don’t think either of those actions are bad. But neither are civil discussions between lower level employees that don’t own the company. Where do you draw the line on double standards?
What’s Next? We Don’t Know.
And if they’re honest, Basecamp doesn’t either.
This will either be a huge learning lesson that requires some backpedaling. Or, when this moment in time is in the rear view mirror, Jason Fried will be giving another TED Talk on another win in company management.
In the meantime, I disagree with the decision. More importantly, I really disagree with how the decision was carried out. Politics mostly stinks right now. It’s exhausting and discourse often brings out the worst in people. Basecamp could have taken this opportunity to set an example of what healthy discourse looks like instead of avoiding it altogether.
The founders have built a brand around what a healthy work/life integration could look like. Forcing politics out of that equation feels like a miss.
I think there is still time for them to learn and course correct. Being progressive means course correcting, even if it’s later in the game.
“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. - CS Lewis
What do you think? Should political discussions have a place at work?