“Everywhere I looked over the past 12 months, executives were grovelling. The thought of promising to work on becoming a better person makes me feel physically sick”
Let me be clear. I’m not against apologies when they are warranted. Bad behaviour needs to be brought to light and investigated, however damaging the fallout. But there are reasons why fire storms have become more common. Technology records our every action. Employees have become activists. It’s harder to avoid controversy in China.
Outrage is everywhere. The boss of Sweetgreen, a salad chain, suffered a backlash earlier in the year when he wrote that hospitalisations caused by covid-19 raised questions about levels of obesity in America. He ended up apologising for his insensitivity—or, as some people like to call it, use of data—and described the episode as an opportunity to “learn forward”. Ugh.
If workers see something they do not like, they are more likely to let the world know about it. Just think about the past year. A group of Netflix employees staged a very public walkout in the autumn over a Dave Chapelle special that they regarded as transphobic. Like many companies, we are looking at how we can tighten the flow of information internally: employees may have to ask for permission to start new Slack channels, for instance. But there is a limit to how far we can go. In April Basecamp, a software company, banned discussion of societal and political issues on its corporate platforms. “We are not a social-impact company,” wrote one of the founders. “Our impact is contained to what we do and how we do it.
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