Lessons on productivity from Musk's 'tough' email to Twitter staff

Musk has turned on the 'dark mode' at Twitter with an email seen by Pulse Uganda, the new CEO of the platform has given staff up until 5:00 pm today Thursday November 17 to pledge their allegiance to be "part of the new Twitter" or get a pay out.

In the email, he says "we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade."

Motivation

Elon Musk Pulse

Musk is notorious for spending sleepless nights at office and even sleeping there, so his policy does not come as a shock to many. However, is it all about revamping Twitter and pushing for productivity as his email portrays?

According to tech investor Sarah Kunst, Musk's takeover has cast Twitter into debt and his behaviour since he became CEO left some advertisers reluctant to spend.

Apparently, in the aftermath of his turbulent and highly publicised takeover, Musk realised that it cost more than the $44bn (£38.7bn) deal he got. He essentially backed himself into a corner and someone had to pay for it, enter Twitter staff.

“He’s now trying to inflict that pain and uncertainty on the employees,” Kunst said.

Moreover, enforcing an abrupt change on contracts of the staff is questionable.

“Can you just send an email to staff who already work for you and just unilaterally change their working contract? That remains to be seen,” she added.

Responsibility and accountability

Musk's reshuffle at Twitter has come under scrutiny as a desperate attempt to save 'himself' at the cost of 'others'.

The 'others' are not limited to Twitter staff, Musk has blamed activist groups for the drop in advertisement revenue and staff cuts on a daily company loss of $4 million.

Musk has reportedly been sleeping at Twitter the past weeks, even while leading electric carmaker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX. A work ethic that he wants his employees to follow by working at least 40 hours a week. He described his work habits in a US court on Wednesday saying "I pretty much work all the time, with rare exceptions."

A blunt Musk said there's “no way to sugar-coat the message” that the crawling global economy was going to hit Twitter’s advertising revenues, so cushioning would come in the form of a tough "fundamental organisational restructuring" at Twitter by the end of this week. A removal of remote working also embedded this restructuring for “difficult times" ahead.

Leadership

Musk Pulse

Dan Ives, a senior equity analyst at Wedbush Securities, said that Twitter’s culture had “dramatically changed” under Musk. That gone were the "'candlelight dinners' and playing ping pong in Twitter’s cafeteria and this is a shock to the system."

He added that "But he also needs to play nice in the sandbox because if key Twitter engineers and developers leave, this will be a major void in the Twitter ecosystem. There’s a careful balance ahead for him, in this tightrope act.”

Will Musk's 'witch hunt' for Twitter's glory replicate his star CEO status? Time will tell but he 'leaves' the decision with the staff saying "Whatever decision you make, thank you for your efforts to make Twitter successful."

Let us know what you think of his approach in the comments.