Eye on HR: Share first, think later

I share, therefore I am

Despite being old (my daughters tell me so with increasing regularity), I'd consider myself an early adopter when it comes to most things tech. I mean, what's the worst that can happen if you adopt a piece of tech early in its lifecycle? It doesn't work very well? It doesn't meet a customer need? No problem - you tried.

This is a long intro to saying I've been on Twitter since 2009, Instagram since 2010 and I've dabbled with plenty of useless platforms that didn't make it (anyone remember Yo?) along the way. The extent to which social media has changed our lives is expansive and undeniable. And I do wonder how many times the Socrates quote "the unexamined life is not worth living" has been adopted, meme-ified and shared over the last decade and a half.

This is modern life. We all share - a lot.

Our reasons for sharing are myriad: to impart knowledge, to praise, to learn, to confirm suspicion, to warn, and yes, sometimes to boast.Our reasons for sharing are myriad: to impart knowledge, to praise, to learn, to confirm suspicion, to warn, and yes, sometimes to boast.

But it is clear that we live in a much more open and transparent way than, say, 20 years ago, even if that communication is often asynchronous and digitally mediated.

I think this mindset goes a long way to explaining the recent phenomenon of 'quiet constraint', detailed last month by our very own Allie Nawrat.

Save any contractual employer-employee obligations regarding business intelligence, or the added difficulties that remote working often poses with regards to working in silos, our modern 'share-first' mentality brought on by the social revolution surely plays a hand in 'quiet constraint' now coming to the fore.

Should it be assumed that every work discovery we make goes immediately on Slack? Perhaps staff might feel more like sharing if they felt listened to - the assumption that everyone is an open book is a wrong but very modern one. As with the story beneath, it all comes back to trust and culture.

Old school meeting hygiene

We need to talk about a post that's been doing the rounds on LinkedIn of late (and then the secondary hot takes market that's gained popularity too).

Elon Musk - don't know if you've heard him mentioned anywhere recently? - sent an email to Tesla staff detailing his rules for productivity. As the post says; unsurprisingly, it leaked. But, perhaps surprisingly, I agree with a lot of it.

• Avoid large meetings
• Leave a meeting if you're not contributing
• Forget the chain of command
• Be clear, not clever
• Ditch frequent meetings
• Use common sense.

So far, so sensible...ish. Let's take each in turn:

• There are plenty of studies that show that large meetings aren't very productive. I get it. But, gatherings such as All Hands-type meetings are important, and even more so in a hybrid working culture. And sometimes, it's just nice to see someone's face, even if you're not saying much. Which brings me to point number two...
• Leaving a meeting if you're not contributing. In principle, yes. BUT - use of video conferencing has changed our behavior, trans-generationally too. During the first UK lockdown we gave our seven-year-old daughter an old iPhone so she could use Houseparty (one of many video apps that spiked in 2020) to see her friends. Once she'd settled into using it regularly, I noticed that she spent long periods with the app open, in silence - her friends similarly mute in the prison of their own homes. My instinct was to think she was being antisocial. Why weren't they talking to each other? But then I realised not every generation uses video platforms for direct, immediate communication. Sometimes it's just about communing. Being with someone else, when you can't share physical space.
• Forgetting the chain of command. Move fast, break stuff - you know the drill. Fast communicators do make fast decisions. But are they always the right ones?
• Be clear, not clever. No complaints here.
• Ditch frequent meetings. Hello, productivity tips from the mid-2010s. (Insert reference to one-hit wonder and/or failed tech platform here.) Tech-enabled meetings are an invaluable part of building and maintaining a strong workplace culture in the post-pandemic workplace. You just. Need to be. Clear. About. Intention. But to Musk's point, yes, lots of meetings ARE unnecessary and the appropriate result can often be achieved on Teams chat instead.
• Common sense - a loaded term if ever there was one. But the spirit of Musk's rule no.6 is sound. Follow principles not rules. Not everyone adheres to the same rules of common sense though, do they? Do you work in a culture of openness and trust? That goes a long way to people being allowed to follow their instincts. Perhaps start there.

None of these six rules negates the ethos of working remotely, so it's odd that Musk believes in office life with such religious fervor. He's also made it clear that productivity can be improved through working alone or in small groups, away from all the rule-makers and bureaucrats.

But then, Elon Musk is a man who's nothing if not idiosyncratic. I doubt this is the last we've heard of him...