Monday February 24th 2025 by SocraticDev
"Elon Musk threatens FBI agents and air traffic controllers with forced resignation if they do not respond to an email."
Employees and the media are outraged.
There is something interesting about the exercise he proposes. He asks his employees to summarize their work from the previous week in five key points and then send this report, copying their supervisor.
For my part, I find the exercise relevant. In fact, I have been doing something similar for several years: every month, I fill out a sheet where I note my achievements, their impact, and the lessons I have learned. This exercise helps me take a step back from my work and skills. In the face of unexpected events, distractions, and constant changes, having an overview is enlightening.
But what is the real intent behind Elon Musk’s request to U.S. government employees?
The Legendary Inefficiency of Large Organizations
Obviously, Musk seeks to demonstrate that many government employees have a limited impact on their organizations. The daily life of a white-collar worker is well-known and often mocked, whether in movies like Office Space or on YouTube: endless meetings, trivial email exchanges, internal political struggles… Everything except value-creating work.
His approach is brutal and intrusive, directly threatening the jobs of thousands of people. But if we set aside this threat, the exercise itself could reveal an unsettling truth: in many organizations, the structure of work itself prevents employees from truly working.
Large companies and administrations are often inefficient, not by accident, but by design. Some cynics even claim that their main goal is to preserve their own structure, rather than delivering value to their clients or citizens.
Liberating Individual Contributors
How can we allow employees to escape organizational blockages?
Unfortunately, it would require getting rid of those who benefit from the status quo. Many executives started their careers with the desire to change the world, only to resign themselves to doing the bare minimum to keep their jobs. Some have mastered the rules of the game so well that they’ve climbed the ranks, becoming the guardians of an inefficient system.
Therefore, eliminating the hierarchy becomes a sine qua non condition for achieving true organizational efficiency. But resistance is strong: those who benefit most from these dysfunctions are the executives and senior management, never the individual contributors.
Self-Organization: An Effective Alternative
Tech companies have proven that it is possible to achieve goals without a heavy hierarchy. Before being co-opted by large corporations, the Agile philosophy promoted simple and effective principles for designing software.
A striking example is Valve, the video game publisher. In this company, there is no formal hierarchy. Employees are free to choose the projects they want to work on and who they want to collaborate with. Better yet, they are encouraged to launch their own initiatives!
"A self-organized team has the autonomy to decide, as a group, how its members will work together, who is responsible for decisions, and the concrete steps to achieve its goals."
Another similar approach is "Mission Command". Originating in the military, this philosophy is based on the idea that subordinates must receive clear objectives but have considerable autonomy in achieving them.
"The ability to assign tasks to subordinates with minimal explicit instructions is a key element of 'Mission Command', adopted by several Western armies. This approach allows great flexibility in dynamic situations, exploiting opportunities through the creativity of subordinates and their understanding of the immediate situation, without requiring new orders."
Challenging rigid hierarchies and ineffective bureaucracy may be what most bothers people about Elon Musk’s approach.
When a Question Becomes a Problem
If the simple question "What did you do last week?" causes so much discomfort, it is probably a sign of an environment riddled with inefficiency.
In fact, rather than targeting government employees, Musk could simply ask the same question to the directors of government agencies. That would be enough:
"Dear directors, what did you do last week?
List five key points and send a copy to all your employees."
