Shopify CEO Email to Managers: We Are Not a Family

Shopify cofounder and CEO Tobi Lütke. Shopify

Shopify联合创始人兼首席执行官Tobi Lütke。Shopify

• Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke sent an email to managers outlining the company's core beliefs.
• Shopify首席执行官Tobi Lütke向经理们发送了一封电子邮件，概述了该公司的核心信念。
• The email came in the wake of intense internal debate about issues of race.
• 这封邮件是在内部就种族问题进行激烈辩论之后发出的。
• In the email, Lütke said that "us-vs-them divisiveness" could "break teams."
• Lütke在邮件中说，"我们与他们之间的分歧 "会 "破坏团队"。

Over the past year or so, a debate over the role that companies should play in its employees' lives has played out in the corporate world.

在过去一年左右的时间里，一场关于公司应该在其员工生活中扮演何种角色的辩论在企业界上演。

While some workers have high expectations for how their employers should be engaging when it comes to social issues, companies are sorting through how to best respond, while staying focused on their businesses.

虽然一些工人对他们的雇主在社会问题上应该如何参与有很高的期望，但公司正在整理如何做出最好的回应，同时保持对其业务的关注。

This has all been heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic, which, for many, has blurred the line between work and life.

这一切都因COVID-19大流行病而加剧，对许多人来说，它已经模糊了工作和生活之间的界限。

In January, a group of more than 400 Google employees announced they had formed a union that would focus on ethical issues and create a structure for worker activism.

1月，400多名谷歌员工宣布他们成立了一个工会，该工会将专注于道德问题，并为工人的行动创造一个结构。

In September, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong wrote a letter that said the company would not engage in societal issues "unrelated to our core mission, because we believe impact only comes with focus." Coinbase offered severance packages to employees who did not agree, and 60 people took the company up on it. The software company Basecamp instituted a ban on political discussions in April, which led to the departure of at least 18 employees.

9月，Coinbase首席执行官Brian Armstrong写了一封信，称公司不会参与 "与我们的核心任务无关的社会问题，因为我们相信只有专注才能产生影响。" Coinbase向不同意的员工提供遣散费，60人接受了该公司的建议。软件公司Basecamp在4月制定了政治讨论禁令，这导致了至少18名员工离职。

In August, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke sent an email to managers outlining the e-commerce company's stance on leadership and social issues.

8月，Shopify首席执行官Tobi Lütke向经理们发送了一封电子邮件，概述了这家电子商务公司对领导力和社会问题的立场。

Just a few weeks earlier, internal debate had erupted over the discovery of a noose emoji in the Ottawa company's Slack system, which some employees said disturbed them. Some employees said they were also upset about a video that a team at Shopify created called "Ten Slack Commandments," a riff on The Notorious B.I.G.'s "Ten Crack Commandments." At the time, protests over the May 25 killing of George Floyd were taking place across the globe.

就在几周前，由于在渥太华公司的Slack系统中发现了一个绞索表情符号，一些员工说这让他们感到不安，从而爆发了内部辩论。一些员工说，他们还对Shopify的一个团队创建的名为 "Slack十诫 "的视频感到不安，该视频是对The Notorious B.I.G.的 "Ten Crack Commandments "的改编。当时，对5月25日乔治-弗洛伊德被杀的抗议活动正在全球范围内进行。

In the wake of the internal debates, Lütke changed the settings on Shopify's diversity-focused Slack channel, called #belonging, to be read-only, further upsetting some employees who told Insider they felt silenced.

在内部辩论之后，Lütke改变了Shopify注重多样性的Slack频道的设置，称为#belonging，只允许阅读，这让一些员工更加不满，他们告诉Insider他们感到被压制。

Lütke's August email to Shopify managers clarified his stance. In it, he said that "endless Slack trolling, victimhood thinking, us-vs-them divisiveness, and zero sum thinking" amounted to a "threat" that breaks teams. He encouraged managers to stay focused on Shopify's mission of empowering online commerce and entrepreneurship.

Lütke在8月发给Shopify经理的邮件中澄清了他的立场。他在邮件中说，"无休止的Slack纠缠、受害者思维、我们与他们的分裂以及零和思维 "构成了一种破坏团队的 "威胁"。他鼓励经理们继续专注于Shopify的使命，即赋予在线商务和创业精神。

A Shopify spokesperson told Insider that the company was not trying to emulate Basecamp in its handling of political issues and that it welcomed discussion of current events.

Shopify的一位发言人告诉Insider，该公司在处理政治问题时并没有试图模仿Basecamp，它欢迎对当前事件的讨论。

"As Shopify is growing quickly with new team members joining every day, our executive team will often send company-wide messages to remind the organization of our vision for equitable entrepreneurship and to reignite our spirit of positive collaboration," the spokesperson said. "This reinforces our need to work together in creating a future that unites, not divides."

"由于Shopify发展迅速，每天都有新的团队成员加入，我们的执行团队将经常在全公司范围内发送消息，提醒组织我们对公平创业的愿景，并重新激发我们的积极合作精神，"该发言人说。"这加强了我们在创造一个团结而不是分裂的未来方面共同努力的必要性。" 

Read Lütke's full email below:

阅读以下Lütke的电子邮件全文：

Team,

团队，

Leadership is tough. Leadership through times of crisis and ambiguity is doubly tough. Leadership through times of multiple compounding global tidal waves can seem impossible. To refer back to my Summit talk, Shopify is in a new box that we don't understand yet. The world is in a new box that it barely understands yet. We've only mapped out a small corner of this box and have just started exploring the rest of the vast dark patches. It will take some time.

领导是艰难的。在危机和含糊不清的时期，领导力是加倍艰难的。在多重复合全球浪潮的时代，领导力似乎是不可能的。回到我在峰会上的演讲，Shopify正处于一个我们还不了解的新领域。世界正处于一个它几乎不了解的新盒子里。我们只绘制了这个盒子的一个小角落，并刚刚开始探索其余的巨大黑暗补丁。这将需要一些时间。

What's more, our team members need us more than ever. The best thing we can do for them is not add to the ambiguity. Shopify hasn't historically been great at setting clear expectations across the organization and I think this is starting to cause an enormous amount of managerial debt that's ballooning out of control.

更重要的是，我们的团队成员比以往更需要我们。我们能为他们做的最好的事情就是不要增加模糊性。Shopify历来不善于在整个组织中设置明确的期望，我认为这已经开始造成大量的管理债务，而且正在膨胀到无法控制。

I can't tell you how to do that in your various departments. But a good start would be to remind everyone that we are a business. More importantly, we are a hugely ambitious one. We are trying to create a world class product that gives superpowers to the merchants that we are obsessed over. Everything Shopify does is to accomplish this, and everyone at Shopify should be able to describe how their job, through a series of direct or indirect steps, furthers this mission.

我不能告诉你如何在你的各个部门做到这一点。但一个好的开始是提醒大家，我们是一个企业。更重要的是，我们是一个极具雄心的企业。我们正在努力创造一个世界级的产品，为我们所迷恋的商家提供超能力。Shopify所做的一切就是为了实现这个目标，Shopify的每个人都应该能够描述他们的工作是如何通过一系列直接或间接的步骤来实现这个使命的。

To help you make this more clear to your team members, here are some pointers about what Shopify is not:

为了帮助你让你的团队成员更清楚地了解这一点，这里有一些关于Shopify不是什么的提示：

Shopify, like any other for-profit company, is not a family. The very idea is preposterous. You are born into a family. You never choose it, and they can't un-family you. It should be massively obvious that Shopify is not a family but I see people, even leaders, casually use terms like "Shopifam" which will cause the members of our teams (especially junior ones that have never worked anywhere else) to get the wrong impression. The dangers of "family thinking" are that it becomes incredibly hard to let poor performers go. Shopify is a team, not a family.

Shopify，像其他营利性公司一样，不是一个家庭。这个想法是荒谬的。你出生在一个家庭中。你从来没有选择它，他们也不能取消你的家庭。Shopify不是一个家庭，这一点应该是非常明显的，但我看到人们，甚至是领导，随意地使用 "Shopifam "这样的词汇，这将导致我们的团队成员（尤其是那些从未在其他地方工作过的初级成员）产生错误的印象。家庭思维 "的危险在于，要让表现不好的人离开变得非常困难。Shopify是一个团队，不是一个家庭。

We literally only want the best people in the world. The reason why you joined Shopify is because — I hope — all the other people you met during the interview process were really smart, caring, and committed. This is magic and it creates a virtuous magnetism on talented people because very few people in the world have this in themselves. People who don't should not be part of this team. This magic and magnetism is a product of tight performance management that I expect all of us to get back to.

我们真的只想要世界上最好的人。你之所以加入Shopify，是因为--我希望--你在面试过程中遇到的所有其他人都非常聪明、有爱心、有责任心。这是一种魔力，它对有才能的人产生了一种良性的磁力，因为世界上很少有人本身就有这种能力。没有的人不应该成为这个团队的一员。这种魔力和磁力是严格的绩效管理的产物，我希望我们所有人都能回到这个状态。

Shopify is also not the government. We cannot solve every societal problem here. We are part of an ecosystem, of economies, of culture, and of actual countries. We also can't take care of all your needs. We will try our best to take care of the ones that ensure you can support our mission. Shopify's worldview is well documented — we believe in liberal values and equality of opportunity. Sometimes we see opportunities to help nudge these causes forward. We do this because this directly helps our business and our merchants and not because of some moralistic overreach.

Shopify也不是政府。我们不能在这里解决所有的社会问题。我们是一个生态系统的一部分，是经济、文化和实际国家的一部分。我们也不能照顾到你的所有需求。我们会尽力照顾那些能确保你能支持我们的使命的需求。Shopify的世界观是有据可查的--我们相信自由的价值观和机会的平等。有时我们会看到一些机会，帮助推动这些事业的发展。我们这样做是因为这直接有助于我们的业务和商户，而不是因为一些道德上的过度。

We want to build one of the best companies in the world. We obsess about our merchants. We want everyone to have a shot at bettering their lot through entrepreneurship. We want to make and keep Shopify, the product, world class or die trying.

我们希望建立世界上最好的公司之一。我们关注我们的商户。我们希望每个人都有机会通过创业来改善自己的命运。我们想让Shopify这个产品成为并保持世界一流，否则就得死。

Only way to do this is through having incredible people. Some of them we hire on future potential, and we help them but expect them to grow into their potential. Some of them we bring in further down their careers. But we all have to re-qualify for our jobs every year. The red-queen race of Shopify's historic 40% or better growth is that everyone has to show up at least 40% better every year to qualify for our current jobs. I expect you to hold yourself and your teams to this standard. Judge this improvement based on having a growth mindset, deepening the craft, taking risks, making better decisions, and doing what it takes to better support our mission and our merchants.

做到这一点的唯一方法就是拥有令人难以置信的人。有些人是我们根据未来的潜力雇用的，我们帮助他们，但希望他们能够成长为他们的潜力。有些人是我们在他们的职业生涯中进一步引进的。但我们每年都必须重新获得工作资格。Shopify历史上40%或更好的增长的红娘是，每个人都必须每年出现至少40%的进步，才能有资格获得我们目前的工作。我希望你能以这个标准来要求自己和你的团队。判断这种改进的依据是：拥有成长的心态，深化工艺，承担风险，做出更好的决定，并为更好地支持我们的使命和商户而做努力。

We will always have compassion for team members in truly difficult situations. For example, those who find themselves suddenly becoming primary caregivers or those who are struggling with mental health issues. There are also second chances, especially for those who have been top performers before. Outside of those cases we need to remind everyone that like any other competitive (sports) team, it matters how you show up every day and contribute to the team's success. Beyond straight performance output, everyone that engages in endless Slack trolling, victimhood thinking, us-vs-them divisiveness, and zero sum thinking must be seen for the threat they are: they break teams. Teams survive and thrive on the actions of the collective, and the cohesiveness of the whole. Poor performance and divisiveness cannot be tolerated.

我们将始终对处于真正困难情况下的团队成员抱有同情心。例如，那些发现自己突然成为主要照顾者的人，或者那些正在与心理健康问题作斗争的人。也有第二次机会，特别是对于那些以前表现出色的人。在这些情况之外，我们需要提醒大家，就像其他竞争性（体育）团队一样，重要的是你每天如何出现并为团队的成功作出贡献。除了直接的绩效产出，每个从事无休止的Slack trolling、受害者思维、"我们 "和 "他们 "的分裂以及零和思维的人都必须被视为威胁：他们会破坏团队。团队的生存和发展靠的是集体的行动，以及整体的凝聚力。糟糕的表现和分裂是不能容忍的。

If this sounds at all surprising, this is because we somehow lost something. Shopify has always been like this. I feel that a lot of these core beliefs have been muddied over recent years. So in my capacity as the one person who has witnessed every minute of Shopify's existence, I want to reiterate some of these core principles. Shopify is as successful as it is right now precisely because of the downstream effects of those early ideas. Currently we are successful despite the muddying. This will not work for much longer. Let's get back there.

如果这听起来有点令人惊讶，这是因为我们不知不觉中失去了什么。Shopify一直都是这样的。我觉得这些核心的信念在最近几年已经被弄得很模糊了。因此，作为一个见证了Shopify存在的每一分钟的人，我想重申其中的一些核心原则。Shopify之所以能取得现在的成功，正是因为这些早期想法的下游效应。目前我们是成功的，_尽管是浑水摸鱼。这不会再有什么效果了。让我们回到那里。

Despite all the external buzz around Shopify (market cap, biggest company in Canada, ...) we are still really early. We are in the big leagues amongst the biggest and baddest companies in the world. When we succeed in our mission, millions of merchants do better. Millions of people find employment. We have the opportunity to make that tens and even hundreds of millions in the future. I'm here for this potential, and I need you to be here for that too.

尽管外界对Shopify有很多议论（市值、加拿大最大的公司......），但我们仍然是非常早期的。我们正处于世界上最大和最坏的公司之间的大联盟。当我们成功完成我们的使命时，数以百万计的商户会做得更好。数百万人找到了工作。我们有机会在未来使这一数字达到数千万甚至数亿。我在这里是为了这个潜力，我需要你也在这里是为了这个。

---

---

OK, that's a lot to take in. You might be tempted to take what's up there and run it through some kind of lowpass filter and translate it into your own language before discussing it with your peers and your leads. Don't. Above is what I need everyone to understand. It's important not to muddy a message that fights against the muddying of principles. You are responsible for reinforcing these lessons and holding your teams accountable to them. The Talent team will follow up with next steps in the coming days. Even better, actively help them with ideas and opportunities to implement those ideas. This is what leadership in action looks like.

好吧，这有很多东西需要接受。你可能会想把上面的内容通过某种低通滤波器来处理，并在与你的同行和你的领导讨论之前把它翻译成你自己的语言。不要这样做。以上就是我需要大家理解的内容。重要的是，不要把一个与原则性问题作斗争的信息弄得很浑浊。你有责任加强这些教训，并让你的团队对其负责。人才团队将在未来几天跟进下一步工作。甚至更好的是，积极帮助他们提供想法和机会来实施这些想法。这就是行动中的领导力的样子。

- tobi

- tobi