I’m going to pick on Patreon, not because they’re special, but because they’re typical. Here is a quote from a blog post in which they Back-pedalled a change to their pricing structure:
We overstepped our bounds and injected ourselves into that relationship, against our core belief as a business.
What I think they want us to hear is “this was a surprising event that normally wouldn’t happen because it’s important to us that other things happen instead”. What I actually hear is that management at companies like this is at best asleep at the wheel, at worst Github/Uber levels of arrogant and ignorant. Either way, new management is needed.
It’s fine to mistakes. It’s fine for someone acting in what they believe to be the best way aligned with their company’s goals and mission to do something out of step, that gets detected and corrected. That’s good management: trust, but verify. On the other hand, this is not an intern sending out an off-tone tweet. For a whole organisation to pivot its business model, create the marketing message, release the marketing message, and schedule the implementation of the new model…either management were involved and didn’t notice or care how broken it all was, or management are not involved and the whole company works around them.
When you want to sweep bad actions under rug of misalignment with your core belief as a business, think about what it means that your business isn’t taking your core belief as a business on board.
