Over the past couple of years, the world has experienced, and continues to experience, a number of major social and political waves that have enveloped society. First there was Black Lives Matter (BLM), and now the invasion of Ukraine.

As the BLM movement grew, became a big deal in tech circles, and made its way to Japan, I found myself as CEO feeling peer pressure from other organizations and other leaders who I respect to make a position statement in support of the movement. As a company, we did not. The reason was because I couldn’t come to terms with just making a public statement if we did not substantially change what we do ourselves to somehow fundamentally help fix the historical structural wrongs. 

What we did do during BLM was open a space within the organization for people to talk openly. This was led by team members, not by me as CEO, though I joined the first sessions to convey support and belief in the initiative.

With the recent invasion of Ukraine, I also found myself struggling with what I should do as CEO, and what, if anything, our company should do. Again, my base thinking was that statements alone are often vapid. If we are to do anything it needs to be in the form of real action. Individually, I had a very strong opinion about the importance of the event and the clear evil and wrong that was being done, but I didn’t feel it was my place to push my opinions onto the organization, as the thoughts were raw and would have come out strong. 

While I am the founder, CEO, and major shareholder of this company, the company belongs to everyone involved in it. I know that I could easily use any of those three positions to make my voice heard, and while that can feel good, I worry that if I get too comfortable in doing that, it would, over time, ruin the organization and the special culture we have built.

Once again, there was a team-led initiative to create an open discussion and, thankfully, the dialogue became much more about supporting Ukraine and our member(s) whose families were affected, than about both-sides-ism or discussing the rights or wrong of the initial politics, which I feared might happen. The team came through.

It can be scary for a leader to provide this space as you don’t know where the conversation will go, what kind of emotions will be ignited, what takeaways will be made. They might well be different from your worldview. Or you might not be able or willing to do what your team may ask of you. Despite the realness of this fear, our leaders, and our future leaders, will allow space for our members to talk, share, and allow their authentic emotions to be heard.

Action Taken after 3/11

After the Great Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami in 3/11, there was similarly a rush by many organizations to volunteer and help out in the weeks and months after. We played small roles in this, again led by individual member initiatives.

As an organization, what we did do was take real supportive action in the years after. 

Every year, around our corporate anniversary, we would take a group to Tōhoku to volunteer and clean up, long after the wave of popular support had passed. Once the media and people’s thinking had moved on, volunteer numbers dropped, but for several years after there was always a group of us from the company volunteering. We would show up and help out when it was no longer popular or trendy to do so. 

The Values That Shape Our Principles

Attuned is a values-based company. I founded it with the intent to build new good into the world, to be about something more than profits or increasing headcount, and with a desire to bring positive externalities to our community. 

As we become larger and begin to have more of an impact in our communities, and on the broader world, we will approach engagement with social issues and geopolitical events from our values, and act, rather than make easy-to-publish statements.

We will not prosecute every social cause. 

We will avoid trends.

We are a business. We need to make money, not only to survive, but to grow. We have to grow for our team, to give them chances to personally grow and develop, to provide opportunities that can enrich their lives and provide meaning. To grow, we have to take care of our customers. We have to understand our customers deeply and empathize with them in order to make products and deliver services that they want and need. All of this is hard to do, and to do it well requires focus. 

But we must also act, and act in a way that uses our strengths—recruiting, motivation, mutual-understanding, applied psychology—to respond to large geopolitical events and support significant social movements or important causes that affect our local communities.

Our vision is to bring more humanity + data to the world to make work more meaningful. We will therefore act, or take a position in the most human way possible, when we need to. Our values give us guidance on what position to take, and how to act. These are the foundations for our decisions when we face questions of large-scale social and geopolitical importance. 

We will take clear public positions when needed, but only when we can back it up with real, meaningful action. If they are unpopular and we find ourselves standing alone, but we’ve done the most human thing, or the most #sociallyprogressive thing to do, we will find the courage to remain standing alone.

Whatever actions we take, they should be long-term, deep and continue well past when the trend or the public has moved on. We want to help fix things at a structural level, build where we can, and not get caught up in the popularity of altruism that all too often follows big societal events.

Our company will always allow a space, within work hours, for members to talk, share, listen, and offer their support for the outside world issues that are affecting their lives. These should be psychologically safe and listening-first environments. 

Our Decision-making Framework

Major tech companies have struggled in recent years with their place in society, and how they should act/react to major social and geopolitical events.

Prof. Audrey Kurth Cronin outlines four ways in which tech companies can navigate the complexities of the social and geopolitical world:

1. Be completely dedicated to free speech. The downside: you can become complicit in violence.
   /or/
   Moderate content. The downside: you are really only working around the edges, not solving nor addressing the core issues.

2. Act in the interest of the users. The downside: there are users on both sides of any issue or war, it avoids a real decision.

3. Adapt to local / national laws. The downside: leads to unsavory compromises.

4. Choose sides according to your principles.

Here at Attuned, we will choose Option 4 and clearly engage with the world. We will take sides according to our principles.

More about ‘Company Culture’

Casey Wahl
Founder and CEO

Intrinsic Motivator Report