What Startups Can Learn From Facebook’s Reckless ‘Move Fast and Break Things’ Mantra
What even smart companies get wrong about core values
In his new book Facebook: The Inside Story, journalist Steven Levy recounts a time in 2009 when employees wanted to articulate what Facebook stood for. How did they describe it to potential hires, or for that matter to mom and dad? HR gathered employees in small groups to hash out the best descriptors. Out of this came four key values they presented to Mark Zuckerberg: focus on impact; be bold; move fast and break things; be open. He liked those as internal guidelines, but asked for a fifth: build social value, meant to capture Facebook’s impact on the world at large.
A decade later, most people only remember “move fast and break things” (a value the company later moved to abandon) — and at this point, as more of a damning criticism of Facebook. For that company, revisiting its old core values will now require a much larger overhaul — not just around obtaining a new slogan, but about all the ways it must apply newly stated values in every product, every program, every employee message and action — with a skeptical world watching its every move.
You stand for teamwork? Respect? Accountability? I mean — who doesn’t?
