Much of the culture that @andreagoulet and I created at @corgibytes was inspired by ideas that we picked up from the folks at 37signals (and later Basecamp). I'm extremely disheartened (and more than a little angry) by the announcement that was made by @jasonfried yesterday. 1/

Any organization, be it a for-profit company or a small non-profit, is created by people. People. You cannot have these organizational structures without having people. Interactions between people can be messy. Each person is different. And that's a _good thing_. 2/

Having diverse voices in your organization helps you better meet your objectives and goals, regardless of whether or not your goals are primarily motivated by profit or some other metric. Diverse perspectives will help you notice blind spots. 3/

Each person is affected by the world around them. And when you have a diverse group, then some of those people will be impacted more directly or more often. The level of impact will not be evenly distributed across the organization. 4/

Those who are not directly impacted by a specific event in the world have the opportunity (and perhaps a responsibility) to learn more about the perspectives of others. Find out why they are affected the way that they are. Explore ways to offer support. 5/

This is what it means to have empathy for those around you. When you see someone hurting, you stop and try to see the world from their perspective. You consider what they might need. And you explore ways that you can help. 6/

What you don't do when practicing empathy is tell people to just pretend like they are not affected. You especially don't do this to people when they show up at work. That people have to hide who they are for fear of losing a job angers me (and I know this happens often) 7/

Instead of telling people to fit inside of neat little boxes and ignore how the events in the outside world affect them, we should make sure that people feel comfortable and safe to be their _full selves_ when they show up to work. 8/

People should _not_ have to hide who they love, how they vote, the color of their skin, how (or if) they worship, where they are from, or _anything_ else about themselves in order to perform the functions of _any_ job. 9/

Organizations that force people to hide who they are in order to perform their jobs are toxic (by definition) to those people. The people who _don't_ have to hide may not notice this toxicity. But it still remains. 10/

Organizations that operate this way will eventually see the impact of creating these toxic structures as people vote with their feet (employees) and others vote with their dollars (customers). I'm acting accordingly. And from what I see in my Twitter feed, others are, too. 11/11