Communication and Coinbase
Peter Drucker, famed management consultant and apparent inventor of the moniker knowledge worker, once said “the most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said”. With that backdrop, Coinbase’s Founder & CEO Brian Armstrong lit a fire in the startup community after publishing a post about narrowing the focus of the company’s mission a couple weeks ago.
The post and its ultimatum went viral in a big way. Partly because people are sitting at home bored. Potentially because a company that is working to build a new and open financial system for the world is narrowing (censoring..?) employee activities internally.
There was support:
And there was criticism:
To those uneducated on the inner workings at Coinbase there was likely confusion. What happened to prompt the post? What was he really saying…or not saying? Undoubtedly Armstrong had buy in from his executive team, board, and a panel of advisors. This one didn’t fly loosely off the shelf. It was accompanied by a follow up post a week later too.
These situations are really tricky. And, like we’ve said before, we’re missing essential context. Still, with a Silicon Valley unicorn tweaking their mission publicly in the midst of a pandemic, we’re prompted to ask more generally:
What is good communication? And is this an example of good communication?
Spoiler alert – we won’t answer the second part. But for a more general guide, let’s turn to the old ways. The ancient teachings of Aristotle highlighted from this HBR article. Did you know Aristotle means “the best purpose” in Ancient Greek? You do now. Thank you Wikipedia!
- Ethos (Credibility): as the CEO delivering a message, that usually helps. People have joined the company for your leadership. For any other leader in a company your message is shared from a pulpit built on a previous record of action and trustworthiness. Make it a strong one. When changing the trajectory of a company, team, or project the effectiveness of the message is directly related to your credibility cachet
- Pathos (Connection): this one is all about making people believe. In you, your ideas, and their connection to the employee and stakeholder base. Is there a belief that you’ll deliver on both what is and isn’t being said?
- Logos (Logic): the foundation of any effective message. What is this new mission? Why is this important? Why now? What are the costs of NOT doing this? For a razor sharp employee base a new mission needs to be clear, concise, and grounded in specific context with data to support the argument(s)
Now back to Coinbase. For employees that didn’t believe in this new mission they were offered 4-6 months of severance and healthcare depending upon tenure. That’s a pretty sweet deal! 50 employees, ~5% of the workforce, took it. What does that tell us? Some people believed in their individual principles more than the new company direction. Some others, realistically, were up for a 4-6 month paid vacation during a trying year before hitting the job hunt next spring.
So who knows. For any effective communicator when a new direction is on the line build a fortress grounded in credibility, connection, and logic. Castles floating in the sky don’t stay airborne forever.