Gus Carlson is a New York-based columnist for The Globe and Mail.
This is a curious and perhaps counter-intuitive thing: to keep Tesla at the forefront of innovation, Elon Musk goes back in time to management strategies that are positively ancient – as in the ancient Tom Peters.
Do you remember him? Mr. Peters has been a management guru since the 1980s and a best-selling author who is credited with all sorts of meaningful phrases about ambitious office lovers eager to add value, raise all boats, hit home runs and pick low-hanging fruit.
Among his mantras: Under promise, above fulfillment. Failure faster, success sooner. And the native piece that Mr. Musk seems to have caught – wandering management – which suggests that managers can increase the morale and productivity of workers if they are personally engaged, instead of hiding in their offices.
This week, the founder of Tesla apparently wiped the dust off his copy of Mr. Peters’ Gospel of Management from 1982. In Search of Perfection: Lessons from America’s Best Managed Companiesand eliminated the option of working remotely at his company – and in the process told senior executives that they needed to do more wandering and less scaling.
“Anyone who wants to work remotely must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean a minimum) of 40 hours a week or leave Tesla,” Mr Musk said in a note to staff. “That’s less than we want from factory workers.”
“The older you get, the more visible your presence should be,” he said. “That’s why I lived so long in the factory – so that those on the line could see me working with them. If I hadn’t done that, Tesla would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. “
Mr Musk also said that senior managers could not comply with the rule by reporting to the most convenient branches if those positions did not meet their job responsibilities. He added that he would personally consider all requests for release.
Asked on Twitter about his views on those people who think office work is outdated, Mr Musk said: “They have to pretend to work elsewhere.”
As expected, Mr Musk’s old position met with criticism. Many companies are struggling to find the right work-life balance for office workers accustomed to working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, with many adopting hybrid models with a combination of workdays at home and in the office.
In what commentators called the Great Resistance, many workers are reluctant to return to the offices, arguing that they are more productive and efficient working at home because their quality of life is better. Many say they work longer than in the office and do not have to struggle with long trips to work.
Recent research tends to support this position. A study by Stanford University shows that workers are more productive if they are allowed to work from home at least part of the time. And a Texas A&M study published last month found no negative link between work at home and productivity.
But Mr. Musk is not alone. Companies like Google’s Alphabet and others have moved to eliminate remote work. And he is not the first technical manager to hold such a position.
Ten years ago, long before the pandemic gave rise to Zoom’s home-based culture, Yahoo CEO Marisa Mayer made a similar statement. She banned work from home after researching the entry habits of teleworkers and found that they were not online as often as they should have been.
The result, she concluded, is an erosion of Yahoo’s creative culture and productivity, which can best be remedied by restoring personal work in the office.
Ms. Mayer faced her own Great Resistance when it was revealed that she had built a nursery next to her office for her young child, a luxury most working mothers affected by her mandate to work back in the office could not afford. will allow.
Mr Musk’s latest move has certainly shaken more Twitter cells, which he intends to buy for $ 45 billion. Employees have already expressed fears that their future new owner will make unpopular changes to the company, including working conditions.
Recently on Twitter, Mr. Musk proposed that Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters be turned into a “homeless shelter because no one shows up anyway,” a comment that suggests he may be leaning toward a solution similar to Tesla.
If Mr Musk bans remote work on Twitter, it will turn the tide of current CEO Parag Agraval, who recently said: “Where you feel most productive and creative is where you work, and that includes work. from home full time forever. ”
Is Mr. Musk’s last trip back to the future in a working environment after a pandemic involving flexibility, not rigidity, risky? Some people close to Tesla say that Mr. Musk, a workaholic whose marathon transitions in the workplace are legendary, is somewhat unrealistic in expecting such tireless commitment from others in his quest to beat competitors to the next big thing.
“Of course, there are companies that don’t require that,” Mr Musk said of his tenure back to the office. “But when was the last time they sent a great new product?” From a long time. Tesla has and will create and actually produce the most exciting and significant products of any company on Earth. That won’t happen if you call him. “
Time will tell who is right – and whether wandering around is more effective than approaching. But it is difficult to bet against the man who has become the richest man on the planet because of his ability to carry out with superiority a vision that few others have dared to do.
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