The Email Heard Round the World

Recently, Elon Musk sent a mass email to federal employees with a blunt demand: justify your job. He required each employee to respond with a list of accomplishments from the past week — implying that their worth can be measured in bullet points and that non-response equates to irrelevance.

As I considered this approach to shaping the federal bureaucracy, I believe Musk’s email was directed to the wrong audience.

Federal employees didn’t create their job requirements. They don’t set the vision, establish priorities, or guide the organization toward accomplishing its mission. Those responsibilities belong to the leaders.

Accountability Starts at the Top

The first step toward assessing the value of any organization does not involve interrogating individual works. Rather, the first step is holding leaders accountable for the systems, structures, and priorities they put in place. Leaders define job roles, allocate resources, and create the environment in which employees operate. So if an employee’s job isn’t producing value, the real question is: Why was that job created in the first place?

Instead of sending an email to rank-and-file workers, the real challenge should be issued to the leaders of the organization:

· How are you ensuring the work being done aligns with the mission?

· What priorities have you set to drive impact and efficiency?

· How are you equipping employees to succeed, rather than just demanding output?

Leaders are responsible for defining success — not just for measuring activity.

Rather than demanding that an employee explain his/her existence, leaders should be the ones explaining how they serve their people. After all, leaders don’t exist to count tasks — they exist to facilitate progress.

So again, the real question should not be What did you do last week? but rather Are our leaders leading effectively?

That’s the conversation worth having.

Leadership is a Two-Way Commitment

If those whom I lead received a similar email, I would hope their response would be an easy one. But more importantly, I would hope I would receive an immediate phone call, and together we would craft a unified response — one that leaves no doubt about others value to me and to the organization we both serve.

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The Email Heard Round the World was originally published in Horizon Performance on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.