Summary: Coinbase’s CEO says that focusing on the company mission is the best way to make an impact on the world. Yet mission statements don’t say much about what a company does, much less about what it values. And even when mission statements do shed light, it’s highly uncertain whether the mission is achievable or likely to promote the company’s values.
Recognizing the limitations of focusing strictly on something as nebulous and value-neutral as a corporate mission, companies and their employees should engage with a variety of social and political issues in a way that aligns with their values and what they hope to build.
Coinbase Co-Founder and CEO Brian Armstrong waded into choppy waters with a recent memo declaring his company to be “mission focused.”
At Coinbase, we say that we are focused on building. What does this mean? It means we are going to focus on being the best company we can be, and making progress toward our mission, as compared to broader societal issues.
This was predictably divisive, with some criticizing Armstrong for the inherent conservatism of his stance and others praising him for a commitment to focus that will increase the probability of company success.
This wasn’t the first time that Armstrong wrote about his company’s mission. In 2016, he published a thorough outline of Coinbase’s vision, mission, and strategy, which he elaborated upon in a 2019 presentation. Although there were minor tweaks between the two, the basic mission statement has remained the same and continues to live prominently on the company’s website:
Our mission is to create an open financial system for the world
Despite Armstrong’s investment in crafting a mission and aligning his company to it, there are three problems with his insistence that Coinbase must be focused on building toward its mission above all else.
Missions don’t explain what a company actually does.
Missions don’t say what a company values.
Mission myopia can stymie critical thinking.
Inspirational and imprecise
Company mission statements are like any other slogan — they’re meant to be inspirational. But there is an inherent tradeoff between inspiration and precision, which can be seen in many types of slogans. For example, Wheaties sells cereal to plenty of people who’ve never won a championship, yet they know “the breakfast of champions” is a far better slogan than “the breakfast of participants” — even if the latter characterizes most of their consumers.
Whereas the Wheaties tagline is meant primarily for customers, a mission statement is even more complicated because it serves many different audiences: employees, customers, investors, partners, etc. To motivate such a diverse group of people, a mission statement must be even more vague and high-level. This of course detracts from its usefulness in telling you what a company actually does and where it should be focused.
This poses a challenge for companies such as Coinbase that aim to be “laser focused” on their mission. To achieve this level of focus, the target must fit within your field of vision. Yet this requires a company to define its mission more narrowly, which puts it at risk of becoming uninspiring (e.g., “Our mission is to help people buy and sell cryptocurrency.”)
Companies may seek to overcome this challenge by insisting that focus on a subsidiary goal — such as buying and selling cryptocurrency — will advance the broader mission over time. But this requires a leap of faith in most cases, especially with a technology as nascent as cryptocurrency. There’s a chance that more people buying and selling cryptocurrency will lead to a more open financial system for the world, but there’s also a decent chance that it will fail to make much of an impact.
If a company really cares about an inspirational mission such as creating a more open financial system, they could modestly reduce their focus on “building” everything themselves and instead support certain public policies and social causes that might promote their mission in other ways (perhaps by helping to build different things). There would naturally be internal disagreements about what policies and causes to support, but these could be managed in the same way that debates about product roadmap prioritization or marketing strategy are handled — with open and honest discussion leading to an outcome of “disagree and commit.”
Missions aren’t morals
Although mission statements are often used to inspire belief in a company’s impact on the world, most of the time they fail to embody any real sense of morality. This isn’t necessarily by accident — again, a mission statement has to appeal to a broad audience with many different values.
To his credit, Armstrong has made it clear that there is a set of values underpinning the Coinbase mission:
We think this is the highest leverage way to bring about more economic freedom, innovation, efficiency, and equality of opportunity in the world.
That’s a good articulation of the moral framework underlying the mission, but the same problem exists as before: the mission is so broad that it hardly guarantees it will promote those specific values.
For example, a more open financial system powered by cryptocurrency could increase economic freedom by making it easier for people to start businesses and remit payments across borders. It could also decrease economic freedom in parts of the world where energy is siphoned off to Bitcoin mining operations or where rogue states and criminal enterprises can more easily evade government sanctions through cryptocurrency.
The ultimate impact of an open financial system depends upon much more than just the technology underpinning it. It also relies upon the broader social and political context of how that technology is developed and deployed. Which is why there’s a third problem with Coinbase’s “laser focus” on mission.
Mission critical
Given that the impact of an open financial system is driven by so much more than technology, it’s essential that employees inspired by that mission should engage with the wide range of social and political issues that may determine whether the mission’s impact is positive or negative.
This is perhaps the most troubling part of Armstrong’s memo — it is likely to discourage employee engagement with a variety of topics from voting rights to foreign policy that will determine the social and political context in which an open financial system is created.
We’ve seen throughout history how the failure to think critically about the broader context of technological development and economic reform can lead to bad outcomes. If Armstrong’s employees are dissuaded from engaging with political and social issues, they are less likely to take them into account when designing products and business models for cryptocurrency — not unlike how Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube failed to account for the political and social context of social media algorithms.
None of this is to say that Coinbase should feel compelled to engage at a corporate level with every social and political cause that motivates employees. But they should allow employees to discuss these issues openly to learn more about them and factor them into the decisions about product and business strategy they make as Coinbase employees — and the decisions about candidates and public policies they make as democratic citizens.
Credits
Photo credit: Stefan Cosma on Unsplash
Wheaties image credit: General Mills
Thanks to Chillhop Music for the tunes that accompanied writing this article.
Mindfulness Moment
Oscar enjoying his first fall in the Midwest. 🐶 🍂