Ok ok we’re a couple weeks late on the Away story but, as the article’s blast radius continues to expand, let’s take a look with both the original article and the additional facts that have since come to light in mind. Needless to say, there has been a lot going on at Away.

For those of you who are unaware, an expose on the culture and working conditions at (travel) suitcase company Away was released two weeks ago from the Verge. And in the days following there has been some additional fallout.

Timeline:
Dec 5th – Verge expose regarding Away’s culture & leadership
Dec 9th – announcement that Steph Korey, Away Co-Founder & CEO, would be stepping down. Away’s COO would be moving into the CEO role
Dec 17th – additional employee allegations surfaced

Before we get into the meat of the article that caused the leadership change, it’s important to begin with two foundational assumptions that anchor any learnings for startup leaders out there:

1.) Building a company is really hard
2.) Building a rapidly scaling company is really really hard. Growth will rip your face off, metaphorically speaking

With that backdrop, let’s walk through some of the story highlights:

• Away was scaling rapidly and the company was understaffed
• Public Slack channels were the mandated company communication method in the name of transparency
  • E-mail was not allowed
  • Private Slacks were “created sparingly” and for “work specific reasons”
• Public criticism on Slack was also common in the name of transparency
• Six employees were let go for comments made in a slack channel that the CEO accessed administratively
• The customer support team was overworked (without overtime pay) and incentivized by vacation days. That is, the withholding of vacation days against certain support milestones in the name of career development

There’s more in the article but that’s the gist. Some hairy stuff. Yet also a TON of context missing. Even with the article’s firsthand storytelling and screenshots, we’re still lacking a rich 360 degree understanding of what was going on from the exec team on down. Because the truth is, in a rapidly growing company, it is hard to be the best version of yourself each day under that type of stress.

Regardless, there are some learnings we can glean from between the lines of this story:

• Private > Public Feedback – the opinion of this community is that feedback (or criticism) is almost always better delivered in private. Even in a culture that promotes transparency there is much more cultural harm to be done publicly than coaching. Public lessons need to be chosen with care as those will echo throughout the whole organization. Coaching is most often more efficiently done individually and in private.

• Tone Matters – written messages can be warped and their message lost over the digital rails they travel. It certainly seems like there was a lot of direct reprimanding going on in the Away slack channels with a harsh tone. These messages could certainly have been softened. All managers can work on honing their tone.

• Two Sides of a Sword – culture is so important to preserve and build upon in any company. Leveraging cultural values to highlight where team members are falling short is a dangerous use of the proverbial sword. Values are something actions are supposed to be held up to, not measured in each individual action or sequence. Using cultural values to position negative incentives seems irresponsible at best and manipulative at worst.

And come on, the vacation withholding was seemingly straight out of the Tony Perkis playbook:

Metrics – anyone else scratching their head a little trying to understand why the customer support side couldn’t get more help? Why was this team held to seemingly impossible metrics? Did they have a baseline per rep support expectation? Was it right? Could some of this have been automated or outsourced faster? It can be helpful to ground the “failing” of a team against the baseline work they were hired to do in order to rationalize a better business case for more help. And promote some sanity across the team too.

All in all a tough end to the year for the Away team. Respect to those who take the risk and endure the building of a business from an idea to a self sustaining operation. It is a difficult road. However, harnessing that power with some humanity this holiday season is quite possibly paramount to all. Happy Holidays 🎄