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Too Many CEOs Have Forgotten That Their Employees Are Their Most Valuable Asset. Elon Musk Is One Of Them

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Too many CEOs today are acting like its 1922, not 2022, when it comes to the question of how and when to return to work.

Elon Musk is one of them. When he orders Tesla’s white-collar employees to get back to the office or “pretend to work somewhere else” or forces factory workers to stay on the assembly line in defiance of California’s public health orders as he did earlier in the pandemic, he sounds exactly like a mining mogul of yore ordering his men back to the pits after a cave-in, scoffing at their health and safety concerns in the same way John C. Osgood did a century ago.

Nor is Musk alone in his retrograde approach.

Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon ordered his employees back to the office full-time, calling remote work “an aberration that we’re going to correct as quickly as possible.” And look at how well that worked out for him: Only half of his headquarters staff showed up.

This dictatorial my-way-or-the-highway approach doesn’t work anymore. It probably never did, but in a world in which this sort of top-down, command-and-control “leadership” style was the norm, men – at least rich, white ones – could get away with it.

But as general-turned-president Dwight D. Eisenhower observed, “You do not lead by hitting people over the head. That’s assault, not leadership.”

And if we’ve learned one thing from the Great Resignation, it’s that most employees are no longer willing to put up with that. Companies and leaders that fail to recognize this fact risk losing talent and expertise that may be difficult, if not impossible, to replace today.

If you want to avoid that, you need to listen to your employees before you start telling them what to do.


Listen First

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received from my mentor, legendary CEO Alan Mulally, was this: Seek understanding before seeking to be understood.

It is one of his personal mantras, and one he practiced with good effect at both Boeing and Ford. You can be sure that Mulally continues to push for this collaborative approach from his current seat on the board of directors of Google’s parent company, Alphabet.

Contrast how Google has approached the question of return-to-work with the blunt decrees issued by Musk.

Speaking to students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in April, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said working together in the same office helps employees develop a sense of community, fosters creativity, and create opportunities for collaboration that are important to the success of any company. But so is flexibility.

“I view giving flexibility to people in the same way, to be very clear,” he continued. “I do think we strongly believe in in-person connections, but I think we can achieve that in a more purposeful way and give employees more agency and flexibility.”

That same month, Google asked its employees to return to the office as well. However, like many forward-thinking tech companies, it opted for a hybrid model that will allow workers to split their time between working from home and working from the office.

What Google and other companies have recognized is that the pandemic has cleared the way for them to do what many of them wanted to do before but couldn’t quite figure out how: transition to a more flexible model of work that would better leverage the collaborative benefits and productivity potential of new digital tools while simultaneously improving employee morale and retention.


Test and Learn

Other CEOs are being even more careful to find the right model for their new normal.

Apple, which originally advocated a similar approach to Google’s is currently rethinking that based on employee feedback. Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook called his company’s pilot program “the mother of all tests.”

“We might be the first to declare the starting point is most likely incorrect and will require adjustments,” he said at the Time100 summit.

Last month, Musk mocked Apple’s more cautious approach by posting a meme of a fat, lazy dog. But when you weigh Musk’s track record of poorly thought-through decisions, false starts, and broken promises against Apple’s steady drumbeat of success, it is the mean-mouthed mogul with the adolescent sense of humor that comes up lacking.

Apple, in contrast, is doing what I and other decision-making experts recommend as the best practice when dealing with complex problems such as this one: it is probing, sensing, and learning. It is setting up experiments and using critical thinking to carefully analyze the results. And most importantly of all, it is engaging with its employees and listening to them, rather than simply telling them what to do.

Musk should try listening too when he meets with Twitter employees tomorrow, but something tells me he’ll do most of the talking.

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