Hi Tom. I was anticipating a response like this and I'm glad you shared your perspective. One of the reasons this piece was difficult to share is that the last thing that I want my customers thinking about is failure.
Let me clarify one thing (and perhaps I should do this in the blog post as well?). Our team cares incredibly deeply about our commitments to our customers and their data. I 100% agree with you that we can _and should_ double-down and work through the weekend when that's what it takes to maintain that commitment.
The thing is, we already do that, and our team was already doing it at the time I wrote this message. People at Keen take their responsibilities to our customers and to each other very seriously. That's why we haven't had another loss since then, now almost 12 months later. When I wrote this message, the problem wasn't that people weren't working hard enough. It was that we were stressed out and burnout was becoming a risk. In this situation, reminding people to take a deep breath and get some perspective seemed to be really helpful.
There definitely is a time and a place to rally and to push through, and we have plenty of experience with that too :)
Love the evenhanded answer, Michelle. And I can't tell you how similar I used to be in that regard. I believed stoutly in a sort of open source management approach and promised myself when I was a youth I would do precisely as you are doing. Over the years I have found it to be suboptimal. Thousands of years' worth of management theory turn out to be a useful precedent. But--and I mean this sincerely--I hope it works for you. Would be a better world, I think, if your way worked best.
My instinct is that this post being on the front of HN, along with the tenor of the comments, is evidence of it working. I'd wager that her post is serving as an incredibly effective piece of content marketing. HN is the perfectly audience for Keen's product, and getting on the front of HN for a full day is a big win both for reaching customers and new recruits. Certainly some people will have your reaction, but another significant percentage will have a positive reaction, as demonstrated in the comments.
Actually the management theory pretty much agrees with Michelle on this one.
The old-school Taylorist-style management theory that you're probably thinking of has been thoroughly debunked now. It doesn't lead to good outcomes.
Leadership theory is much more nuanced now, there's a recognition that the best leadership style to use in any given situation is very much based on context and team membership.
Management need to deal with the situation as it is, because that builds trust that management are actually dealing with the situation.
Let me clarify one thing (and perhaps I should do this in the blog post as well?). Our team cares incredibly deeply about our commitments to our customers and their data. I 100% agree with you that we can _and should_ double-down and work through the weekend when that's what it takes to maintain that commitment.
The thing is, we already do that, and our team was already doing it at the time I wrote this message. People at Keen take their responsibilities to our customers and to each other very seriously. That's why we haven't had another loss since then, now almost 12 months later. When I wrote this message, the problem wasn't that people weren't working hard enough. It was that we were stressed out and burnout was becoming a risk. In this situation, reminding people to take a deep breath and get some perspective seemed to be really helpful.
There definitely is a time and a place to rally and to push through, and we have plenty of experience with that too :)