The Associated Press called it an “extraordinary request,” but it’s certainly not extraordinary. In fact, it’s incredibly ordinary for employees to report what they are working on.
And, from an HR perspective, I love it. Mostly. Here’s why:
1. Knowing what your employees do is necessary for success
How many misunderstandings have you faced in your time in business? Probably more than you can count.
You tell an employee to do A and the employee does B. It’s not (always) because your employees are bad employees or you are a bad boss. It’s because things aren’t always clear.
Additionally, your best employees often take initiative and just get stuff done. You don’t hear about it, because there is no need to loop you in. It just happens. But, your worst employees get constant contact and communication. So, when it comes time to promote or give raises, you’re keenly aware of what your needy employees do all day every day, but have no idea what your best employees do.
This type of exercise, done on a regular basis, keeps you up to date. It’s also incredibly helpful should someone get sick, have a family emergency, or quit. You have documentation of what they do on a regular basis.
To read the remaining four reasons I love it and the reason I don’t, please click here: 5 Reasons I Love Elon Musk’s Request for Five Things, and 1 Reason I Hate It
Please don’t make excuses for this bullying and terror campaign. It’s not good and it’s not designed to BE good; like the back-to-office push, removing DEI protections, and other nonsense, it’s designed to create a toxic and hostile workplace that drives people out of these jobs.
Even if it wasn’t, it’s still an idea so stupid it boarders on suicidal for any organization that engages in it. By focusing on wins for the week you are disincentivizing people from working on difficult problems or laying the foundations for major accomplishments. What you end up with is a bunch of flashy, soundbite-worthy, but insubstantial “accomplishments” that ultimately do nothing to support the organization or its objectives.
And ignoring all that, completely ignoring normal channels of communication is idiotic. The first thing I realized when I moved into management was that part of the deal was sacrificing the level of detail I used to see things at. The whole reason my job exists is so that my boss and their boss don’t need to know the details; it’s my job to translate those to my bosses in terms they care about (dollars and cents in my case). In many cases the executives we ultimately report to don’t even understand what counts as a success–try explaining mapping undulating subsurface topography in karst to a business major! And that’s fine in a healthy relationship. They don’t need to care. They care that I can make them a healthy margin.
Finally, these sorts of antics destroy trust in an organization. They all know that their jobs are not valued, that the organization is wildly unstable, and that ultimately they cannot count on…well, anything really. There are no rules other than “Whatever Musk wants”, which isn’t a situation that allows for planning. Do I start a project that will take three years? Probably not–I have no idea if I can accomplish it or not, and it may be dangerous to abandon it partway through (people WILDLY under-estimate how dangerous the energies and chemicals necessary in an industrial civilization like ours are). Again, this is going to result in a lot of showy, soundbite-worthy activities that ultimately add up to nothing and end up being extremely costly.
There is no good here. It’s intentionally designed to be terrible and destroy organizations. There is no excuse.