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“Asana’s mission is to help humanity thrive by enabling all teams to work together effortlessly.“ I’ve tried the product and if that was their mission I couldn’

“Asana’s mission is to help humanity thrive by enabling all teams to work together effortlessly.“ I’ve tried the product and if that was their mission I couldn’t tell. Trying to force some sort of higher purpose into every company seems disingenuous at best. Seems like a stretch for an impact investment firm.

matte_black 9y ago
The higher the purpose, the lower the self-esteem.
johnydepp 9y ago
There's always a primary purpose and secondary purpose. This might be the second.
thisisit 9y ago
This is a good example what happens when everyone wants to do some kind of "impact investing". Companies have to come up with clever ways to market themselves even if it is disingenuous.
keyle 9y ago
"effortlessly" with modal windows everywhere, sparkly animations and spaghetti ticket management
rdlecler1 9y ago
Either the company needed to have a mission to attract and impact investment firm or the impact investment firm is having trouble finding opportunities and has to convert companies into faux impact startups.
schimmy_changa 9y ago
It might be a little gauche to link to your own blog, but my thoughts on figuring out the impostor "higher purpose" mission statements: http://colinschimmelfing.com/blog/the-hierarchy-of-jobs/ http://colinschimmelfing.com/blog/the-hierarchy-of-jobs/ We can see that individuals value humanistic goals in the tech industry, and companies find it important to claim they fulfill these goals. As Mike Judge shows, often the claim is shallow – only put forth to gain status. To judge the claim for a company suggesting positive social good, there’s an easy test: would the company claim a positive social good if there were no recruiting, PR, or status gains to come of it? If the answer is no, the company is simply behaving as the mimicking actor and the claim should be ignored. A company who truly has that positive social good as a mission will, simply in stating their reason for existence, claim the social good. As examples: OPower, Stellar, Khan Academy, Mosaic, SpaceX, etc. (note that I don’t work for nor own stock in any of these companies) Really, their mission could be: "making work more efficient by helping all teams work together effortlessly" or "saving time for humans by making collaboration easier". Those would be decent without the puff.

matte_black 9y ago

The higher the purpose, the lower the self-esteem.

johnydepp 9y ago

There's always a primary purpose and secondary purpose. This might be the second.

thisisit 9y ago

This is a good example what happens when everyone wants to do some kind of "impact investing". Companies have to come up with clever ways to market themselves even if it is disingenuous.

keyle 9y ago

"effortlessly" with modal windows everywhere, sparkly animations and spaghetti ticket management

rdlecler1 9y ago

Either the company needed to have a mission to attract and impact investment firm or the impact investment firm is having trouble finding opportunities and has to convert companies into faux impact startups.

schimmy_changa 9y ago

It might be a little gauche to link to your own blog, but my thoughts on figuring out the impostor "higher purpose" mission statements: http://colinschimmelfing.com/blog/the-hierarchy-of-jobs/ http://colinschimmelfing.com/blog/the-hierarchy-of-jobs/ We can see that individuals value humanistic goals in the tech industry, and companies find it important to claim they fulfill these goals. As Mike Judge shows, often the claim is shallow – only put forth to gain status. To judge the claim for a company suggesting positive social good, there’s an easy test: would the company claim a positive social good if there were no recruiting, PR, or status gains to come of it? If the answer is no, the company is simply behaving as the mimicking actor and the claim should be ignored. A company who truly has that positive social good as a mission will, simply in stating their reason for existence, claim the social good. As examples: OPower, Stellar, Khan Academy, Mosaic, SpaceX, etc. (note that I don’t work for nor own stock in any of these companies) Really, their mission could be: "making work more efficient by helping all teams work together effortlessly" or "saving time for humans by making collaboration easier". Those would be decent without the puff.