On Saturday, Elon Musk tweeted out that all federal employees would be asked to send a bulleted list of five items they accomplished in the past week by Monday night, and if they didn’t respond they would be terminated.

(to be clear, he said if they didn’t respond they were automatically tendering their resignation, which is very different from termination and also … it doesn’t work like that, but that’s a subject for a legal blog post, which is not really my thing)

I’m worried that some impressionable youths or aspiring managers will see this action from the richest man in the world and say “Wow, that’s some fantastic leadership. I’m going to do that when I’m in charge of something!” It is not fantastic leadership. It is so dumb. Let’s talk about why.

What gets measured gets managed

That phrase (wrongly attributed to Peter Drucker) indicated that people manage based on whatever is measured. The corollary of this is that people will focus on whatever is getting measured, regardless of how important it actually is. As W. Edwards Deming said:

When management sets targets and makes people’s jobs dependant on meeting them, they will likely meet the targets  – even if they have to destroy the enterprise to do it

So what is measured when Elon Musk asks for a list of things you accomplished that week?

Well, we can’t say that he’s actually measuring any tasks that were done because there’s no reason to assume anyone would be completely honest in what they respond with. So he can’t be measuring actual accomplishments.

He can’t be measuring actual productivity, because, again, people could “pad their stats,” and there’s no way to confirm or deny it. Even without lying, anyone who has gone to college has learned the subtle art of BS.

So what does an email actually measure? Well, the only thing it can measure. The ability to email. Specifically, the respondent’s persuasive writing abilities. Must has indicated that some of the responses are great and THOSE people should be up for promotions. Again, all he knows about them is that they write persuasive emails. That is all that has been measured for.

The fundamental hubris of tech people

Technology people have this one huge blind spot that is kind of crazy. They assume that because they’re good at one thing (say, coding or running a website) that makes them good at other, unrelated things (say, stand-up comedy or making fresh squeezed fruit juice).

But people aren’t actually like that. Usually, people are good at some things, and they aren’t good at other things. I know this sounds basic, but stay with me.

The job of a good manager is to find someone who is good at the thing they need them to do. So if you need someone to take care of lions at a zoo, you probably have special tests that help you determine if they’re good at that. Or if you need someone to wire up a house, you try and find someone who has the necessary education, experience and licenses and can show you some of their previous work.

Are all great electricians excellent persuasive emailers? Are all great lion … maintainers excellent at writing persuasive emails?

Odds are good they are not. In fact, you should expect that they shouldn’t be! There isn’t a lot of overlap between sending persuasive emails and feeding lions! Lions don’t use email, and even if they did that wouldn’t be the way to convince them to eat.

So please don’t waste people’s time

When you are a manager, don’t ask people to explain to you how productive they’ve been. Your job, as a manager, is to determine what they should be doing, and measure how good they are at doing it.

Asking someone to justify their own job is a terrible waste of time that not only doesn’t work, but it’s counterproductive. If we follow this chain of logic to its end we will eventually have a workforce people only by employees who are excellent at BS — regardless of their actual skill at their actual job. You will have created a workforce of suckups.

But maybe that’s what Musk wants.