Musk’s latest ‘efficiency’ stunt is performative management at its worst

This week an email landed like an unexploded grenade in the inboxes of 3 million US government employees. “Please respond to this email,” it began, “with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and CC your manager.”

It contained just 35 words, and was left unsigned, but there was no doubt who it came from. The world’s richest person, Elon Musk, is on a rampage to reduce the size of the American federal government through the so-called department of government efficiency, or DOGE (pronounced as ‘dohj’).

Elon Musk and his DOGE team don’t actually care about whatever work government workers may have done, the implication is that it’s still not enough.Credit: AP

Alongside a team of young men, whom some have unkindly nicknamed “DOGEbags”, they’re slashing and burning their way through staff lists, something Musk has done previously with glee.

When he bought Twitter in 2022 for $US44 billion ($69.6 billion), he told workers they faced “a fork in the road” if they didn’t subscribe to his “extremely hardcore” work ethic. His shock-and-awe process reduced Twitter’s workforce from 7500 to 1300, and its revenue by almost half.

But Twitter and the US federal government are very different entities. If you break Twitter, some tweets might load slower than normal. If you break the cumbersome but functioning mechanism that underpins the world’s largest economy, it won’t be easy to put it back together.

Governments and large corporations do have something in common, however: they are unwieldy without order. You need clear lines of reporting and multiple layers of communication to get everyone moving in the same direction. The bigger an organisation, the more complex it is.

It’s not the text of the request that’s the issue here, it’s the subtext.

One surefire way to undermine it all? Ignore the established lines of hierarchy and ask every employee to report “what did you do last week?” to a singular point.

This directive is an example of performative management at its worst. That is what happens when managers want to appear as though they’re leading while doing the opposite.

Common examples include a boss “checking in” on you then checking out when you respond, or someone who schedules regular meetings without having much to say. There are many examples of companies that love to run culture surveys to get staff’s feedback, then never follow up or act on any of the results.

The key to understanding performative management is to watch someone’s actions, not just their words. At first glance, there is nothing inherently wrong with the question Musk has proposed.

Accountability at work is healthy and required, and every worker should be able to point to things they’ve recently been doing. In fact, this is a perfectly legitimate question for a boss to ask an employee, and something that is shared naturally in a well-functioning business.

However, it’s not the text of the request that’s the issue here, it’s the subtext. Musk doesn’t care about whatever work they may have done, the implication is that it’s still not enough, and it’s delivered with intentional intimidation.

A job comprises intricate components to achieve set goals that develop over time between workers and management, departments and executive teams. Simplifying that into five bullet points to send to an anonymous email address under duress pierces any of the remaining trust that is integral to a healthy workplace.

If Musk and his team actually cared about the tasks those 3 million people did last week, they’d spend time inside each department trying to understand their jobs and processes, and then implement cuts in a responsible, targeted and sustainable way.

Instead, he’s focused on making it appear like he’s performing the role of cutting efficiencies by lobbing 35-word grenades that have the potential of exploding right back at him.

Tim Duggan is the author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter at timduggan.substack.com

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