Newfangled #20: Why Elon Musk is Like My Dad
On the Future of Work, Bosco and his big stick, replacing social media with books and Gallium Nitride.
This is a special father’s day edition. I have gone a bit off-piste but bear with me. This is all about why Elon Musk is behaving like my Dad.
My Dad is deeply suspicious of storing anything in The Cloud. He sees The Cloud as some newfangled thing that he wants nothing to do with. In his world, it is best to store everything on a hard drive or local server. He has no interest in learning about The Cloud. He does not want to engage in conversation about any potential benefits of The Cloud. He has only recently started trusting Direct Debits from his bank account and that is enough progress for him for a decade or at least until his smartphone starts obeying him.
As a sidebar, this is also a really interesting test on whether anyone I share a gene pool with reads this newsletter.
Following my Dad’s philosophy, Elon Musk is deeply suspicious of working from home. He sees working from home as some newfangled thing that only work-shy employees would engage in:
In his world, it is best to monitor people by seeing them sitting at physical desks in expensive offices. He has no interest in learning about working from home. He does not want to engage in conversation about any potential benefits of working from home. 1
He has only recently started realising that tunnels aren’t very efficient solutions to traffic problems and that he has a “super bad feeling” about the economy right now.
Conversely, Twitter has told its employees that they can work from home forever:
But I guess in Dad, sorry, Elon’s mind, Twitter’s employees haven’t been working hard enough from home on the bot problem that is the reason he is buying Twitter but now doesn’t want to buy Twitter because they have too many bot accounts. Keeping up? No, me neither.2 By the time I publish this the situation will have undoubtedly changed again.
Why are you talking about your Dad and Elon? Where’s the newfangled business model stuff?
What if we look at working from home as a business opportunity?
It’s replacing city centre real estate with collaboration tools or software as a service (in The Cloud, sorry Dad).
It’s potentially enabling better talent — mostly women with caring responsibilities — to remain in the workforce. By the way, my Dad always did the school run, having a more flexible schedule than my Mum. Definitely ahead of his time on the gender roles front. Kudos to him.
A life expectancy increases, we are going to be working longer and working from home is an enabler for an older workforce, again more talent in the staffing pool.
So, there has to be a way of realising the business opportunity.
As any management consultant knows, if you present Option A and Option B to a client, they always want option AB (or BA if you try to be smart and present AB as a third option) i.e. Hybrid. So, the answer is going to be Hybrid working.
There’s an argument that says face time in the office is good to secure promotions, as Prof Scott Galloway says:
[T]he promotion will go to whomever has the best relationship with the decider 3
But that only works if the boss is in the office too, which is often not the case, as there is a “large and growing disconnect” between work flexibility for executives and non-executive staff.4
This is really an issue of visibility. If you think this can’t be managed online, then I implore you to look at all the TikTok and Instagram influencers out there who are making themselves visible for profit.
And then there are the challenges of trust, collaboration and connection in the workplace. Yes, face-to-face is a solution. But is it the best solution? We’ve all been to a meeting that could have been an email. We’ve all received emails that could have been a thread on Slack.
Either way, the future of work is about being more human not less but perhaps not sitting next to each other every day.
Let me know whether this resonates in the chat.
The Round-Up
What we’ve been watching?
My fave follow on TikTok so far is @boscoandhisbigstick. Thanks Gareth for the recco.
What we’ve been reading?
I have no time to read anymore - I’ve downloaded TikTok. Apparently, the average Tik Tok user could read 42 books a year if they switched formats. 35 for Facebook, 43 for Instagram, 22 for Twitter. Source here
What we’ve been enjoying?
Learning about new materials for electronics like Gallium Nitride which can replace silicon in electronics and save 50% of the energy used in everything from your iPhone/ Android Phone to huge data centres (back to The Cloud, again)
I think the issue is not necessarily a generational issue but is more a conservative vs liberal issue. There is a correlation between conservatism and age (people tend to get more conservative as they get older). I'm only 2 years younger than Elon Musk but I don't think like him. You and I are both Chemical Engineers by education. There is something about Chemical Engineering that seems to attract free thinkers :). I (probably like you) thought the pandemic had a great impact in that it forced conservatives to trial working practices that they never previously imagined could work as well as they did. Some conservatives still want to go back to the way things used to be not realising that the world has moved on.