Elon Musk was right
Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay
Elon musk recently told Tesla Employees to get back to the office for at least 40 hours per week, or “pretend to work somewhere else”. I noted that there was a significant backlash to this statement in the comments sections on LinkedIn for example. Clearly, many people do not agree with Musk and appreciate the choice to work from home or the office and where you consider yourself most productive. It is a question that evoke a lot of emotions. Personally, I think Musk is correct. I also think it is useful to evaluate this question and compare it to education.
In this article, when I refer to “Zoom education” I mean distance education in general. First, I dare you to find one (1) teacher who will conclude that Zoom education is better than classroom education. Second, I dare you to find one (1) student who says Zoom education is better than Classroom. Honestly, I do not think you will find a single one of each. Do note that I personally love both distance education and distance work and that I do my best to use it as much as possible, so I am on the completely different side of the spectrum from Musk on this issue. I do distance work myself every day, and several of our employees do it as well. So, I am a strong proponent of so called “hybrid work” both in my words and in my action. Still, I agree with Musk.
The fact of the matter is that you can never reach 100% quality on Zoom education. You can probably get pretty close, but the final percentages are unattainable. Something happens in the meeting between human beings that is exceptionally difficult or even impossible to recreate over a network link. If you do a really good job with distance education, perhaps you can reach 80-90% quality compared to the classroom. But you can never exceed it. And this is how I understand Elon Musk. Tesla is no ordinary company; it is manufacturing exceptional products. To make exceptional products, you must always choose the very best option, in every decision you make. Work from home or from the office is one of those decisions. Even if you can reach 99% quality from home, 100% would be better. And if the purpose is to manufacture the very best, bar none, then the demand for office presence becomes a no-brainer. And this is also the lens through which I think his statement should be interpreted. It is that final 99th percent that makes all the difference to the exceptional.
In our case – a specialist acoustic consultancy firm – the hybrid work solution becomes the obvious choice. There is no doubt in my mind that we would reach a little bit further with our company Acouwood should we all work under the same ceiling. But in my case, it would be a deal breaker, because I would only move to the south of Sweden after Hell freezes over. It’s not that I don’t like the southern end of my country. It is nice. I just like the North – my home – more. Specialist work requires special people that are few and far between, and to introduce a strict geographical requirement would narrow down the potential number of employees so unforgiving that there would be almost no one left to recruit. But on the other hand, we are not doing manufacturing either. We are consultants, which means that we are active in projects all over Sweden. A significant part of our work involves online meetings. Physical meetings are just not an option anymore, because then we wouldn’t do much else than travelling. So for us it makes a lot of sense to allow a certain degree of decentralization.
Honestly, it is a useful method to achieve good things, to never settle with anything else than the best. I have used the same principle when buying clothes. If you find a garment you love that is 100% perfect – go ahead and buy it. Even if the price is painful. If it’s only 95% correct, leave it and walk away. One of my favorite jackets is a dark green Tiger jacket. I saw that one in a store and fell in love at first sight. But the price tag was way more than I had ever spent on a single piece of garment before >4000 SEK. Anyways, I bit the bullet and bought it. Now, a couple of years later, this green jacket is one of or perhaps the most worn piece of garment in my whole wardrobe. And that makes it the cheapest one, because the cost per wear is what matters in the end. I have other jackets that were a lot cheaper in comparison. But I have only worn them a handful of times and consequently, the cost per wear can easily be 10X more than my green favorite.
To always choose the best option is not the same thing as to be a perfectionist that never gets anything done. Decisions is what produces progress. I hope these thoughts can help explain Musk’s rationale to those that were upset by his statement. Think about it as Zoom vs Classroom education. Why shouldn’t the same principle apply to work? On the other hand, distance education will always trail behind the physical meeting between human beings. But it is scalable. You can reach thousands more people with distance education, whereas traditional classroom education has a hard limit on how many students you can handle as a teacher. But that is a topic for another blog.