Every apartment has a junk drawer — a place where you shove everything you don’t want to look at. Companies have the same thing: avoided conflicts, difficult decisions, fears, uncomfortable truths. The operating principle “open the drawer” means going to that drawer, opening it, and bringing clarity to the mess inside.
At ONA, this principle emerged from the painful experience of laying off 30% of the company. Before that, the culture had “toxic niceness” — walking on eggshells, not wanting to discuss hard things. The layoff forced radical transparency and became the crucible from which “open the drawer” was born.
The phrase works because people can actually say it: “Let me open the drawer with you on that.” It gives permission to have the real conversation. It became the most-used phrase in the company, transforming how teams address conflict, make decisions, and give feedback.
“Our job as a company is to go to that drawer, open it, and bring clarity into the messiness of that drawer.”
Principles must be phrased as things people can say in daily conversation — “raise the bar,” “open the drawer,” “ask what’s” — to become truly alive in the culture.
Related Concepts
- Nice cultures breed passive aggression
- Embrace intensity for transformation
- Run toward friction, not away from it