[tpmoney]

So I mean what I'm about to say completely sincerely. I don't know if english isn't your first language, if you have a completely separate cultural background, or you fall into a neuro-divergent category that presents problems with communication. I get that the english language is full of idioms and unstated assumptions, and further that text online communication lacks the tone and body language cues that make reading some of those side channels harder. Regardless, you seem to have a lot of communication mis-steps and moments of being "not clear", around this and other problems that have come up with your company in the past.

You're the CEO of a company trying to push something forward, you should probably put some serious thought into getting a PR person to either vet the things you're going to say, or just have them speak for you and your company and stay out of discussions yourself. It's one thing to have occasional mis-communications, but when you're very publicly having multiple "mis-communications" that are resulting in negative reputation for your company, you're actively doing harm to your employees and their work. Open transparency that isn't filtered through PR speak is a laudable goal, but by the nature of being a business and a business owner, you're going to be held to a higher standard than your average anonymous forum poster, and consequently you need to be aware of when your "open transparency" is a liability rather than a positive for your company.

[syrusakbary]

I think you laid out very well one of the issues of the last century in the western culture: PR as a way to help shape the reality rather than accountability through transparency.

Fortunately enough the open transparency strategy has helped us to hire incredibly talented people that couldn’t care less about the PR stunt, and full transparency have helped them understand the reality of complex situations, solving any misinterpretations with clear communication. That’s a culture worth fighting for. Of course, if you care more about the PR stunt I can fully understand your point of view

[tpmoney]

I'm not even sure how to respond to this other than by pointing out that it's a perfect example of your terrible communication skills. I'm telling you that you take a common phrase like "for some reason" which any reasonable person would at best interpret as a genuine lack of known reason, and more likely (both because of the medium, and your generally hostile tone) as a snarky implication that there's something nefarious going on, and you claim that you meant it as a general expression of disagreement. I'm fairly confident that no one hears "for some reason" and translates that to "I completely understand and acknowledge the stated reasons and disagree that they are right". I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that you have a reason to – consistently, over months and multiple "incidents" – have these sorts of "misunderstandings", and am suggesting that you do something to make sure your communications are clear, or otherwise stay out of doing the communicating. I even noted that your goal of transparency was laudable, but that you weren't actually accomplishing what you thought you were.

You've somehow managed to twist that into a rant about how wester culture only values PR as a way to "shape the reality" and how I "care more about the PR stunt". You are a bad communicator. The problem isn't your "culture of honesty". The problem is you keep choosing words and phrases that don't mean what you intend them to mean. The problem is that when people try to get that "accountability" out of you, you double down and insist that you are being mis-understood and that people have it out for you. The problem is your tone, words and actions come across as defensive, dishonest and in some cases more like a PR attempt to "shape the reality rather than accountability".

I'm glad you've hired incredibly talented people who couldn't care less about PR stunts. You owe it to those people to stop torpedoing your own business with your inability to live up to your goals of clear communication.

[syrusakbary]

> and am suggesting that you do something to make sure your communications are clear

I believe the best way to have clear communication is by having an extra bit of communication when there is any misunderstanding, which is what I'm doing by following up in this conversation. We all have different meaning for words even if they are written the same (you just need to see how the same religious text can have so many different interpretations).

I have done an effort to spend some extra time to explain the things you misunderstood from my communication. For me, that's aiming to have a clear communication. Of course, we don't know each other. So the tone and/or interpretation can vary depending on our feelings of the person.

Let me put a simple example of what I meant: I did stated that "if you care more about the PR stunt I can fully understand your point of view", which is actually quite different to assuming that you "care more about the PR stunt" as you mentioned (there is a big "if" there that somehow you missed). Let me be even more clear of what the "if" meant in my writing:

* if you care about the PR stunt -> I fully understand your point of view.

* if you don't care about the PR stunt -> I don't understand your point of view

As you can see, a thing that was quite clear from my point of view (and I assume for most of the readers), was not clear for you. And I'm not assuming you are a bad communicator, I just assume there was a misunderstanding because we are, in reality, different people with different minds.

In any case, I don't think we make anyone a favor by discussing this more publicly. If you want to have a Zoom chat (because lets be honest, miscommunication is always easily handled via video) about what other things where there might be a misunderstanding, I will be very happy to do so. Please feel free to email me at [e-mail]