What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture

by Ben Horowitz

Slack’s core cultural values, empathy, ended up with a lot of unintended consequences. (As the samurai realized, virtues are superior to values, but until that understanding becomes widespread, a lot of companies will continue to have values.) The empathy value was primarily aimed at customers, but it was also meant to improve communication internally by helping you understand your fellow workers better. If you are an engineer and you really understand the struggles of a product manager and the process she went through to get the customer data she’s presenting, you’ll take it more seriously. But when employees got feedback from their managers that they needed to work more effectively with their peers or raise their overall game, a few weaponized the empathy value and fired back with “By giving me that feedback, you’re not being empathetic!” Instead of using empathy to improve communication, these employees wanted to outlaw it because it hurt their feelings. Their pushback made some managers hesitate and begin to withhold feedback, fearing it might seem like unempathetic criticism.