News flash! Epiphanies can occur in the metaverse.
This past week, Facebook founder and Meta Platforms ruler, Mark Zuckerberg, had one.
He announced his management manifesto to the entire Meta staff.
And lo and behold, Zuck, as his friends call him, wants Meta to be leaner, (“leaner is better,” he says), and flatter, (“flatter is faster,” says he). If I may translate corporate-speak, Zuckerberg wants to operate Meta with lots fewer people.
So, out go 21,000 Meta employees, just like that.
Zuckerberg declared 2023 as Meta’s “year of efficiency.” He loves that e-word so much he used it a dozen times in his presentation. After 40 years working for corporations, when I hear efficiency, I start to break out in hives. Because what they really mean but don’t want to say publicly is,“buckle up because it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
Oh, and about that metaverse, you know the future version of the internet that Zuckerberg named his company after…forget it. His new top priority is AI, artificial intelligence. Do you think last year’s loss of almost $14 billion somewhere in the metaverse, had anything to do with Zuckerberg leaving the virtual world for the real world?
Maybe Mark time-traveled and discovered a dusty copy of Jack Welch’s book, “Straight from the Gut,” and digested the best practices of that famous General Electric CEO.
I worked for Jack, as everyone called him, when GE owned NBC. He wasn’t perfect, but he was a Jedi master for what young Zuck is now trying to implement.
Jack wasn’t warm and fuzzy. No, far from it. He didn’t wear t-shirts to work and he didn’t go to Harvard. He didn’t provide free dry cleaning to employees, or cafes with baristas and omelet stations. It was all the bottom-line for Jack. You weren’t coddled but you were encouraged, and if you didn’t perform, you were clobbered.
Welch was focused like a laser beam on growth and on profits. His mantra was that every GE business had to be number one or number two in its sector. He instituted a Six Sigma program throughout the entire company to reduce inefficiencies and errors. Welch obliterated layers of management. He said “Layers hide weaknesses. Layers mask mediocrity.”
Meta is mired in mediocrity because last year it lost close to $750 billion dollars in market value. Revenue growth has fizzled and expenses are high. I don’t have an MBA but that doesn’t sound like a winning combination to me.
Welcome to the old economy, Mark Zuckerberg. Apparently you’ve stopped worrying about making sure your employees attend their daily Yoga classes. Instead you’re going to make sure they hit their profit projections.
And while Mark’s ah-hah moment was happening, he realized that full-time work from home is sucking the productivity out of his company. “Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers…[that] remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely,” pronounced Princely (that’s what his mom calls him).
Zuckerberg says, “I encourage all of you to find more opportunities to work with your colleagues in person.”
In other words, get ready, Meta-heads, you’d better start bagging your work-from-home sweats and start buying some new Lululemon office outfits.
As TheStreet.com correctly headlined, “Mark Zuckerberg Ends The Tech Party.”
What also has ended the tech party is this past week’s collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank.
Don’t you just love it when an irresponsibly run bank goes bust and almost pulls down the entire system?
Let’s go back to the old-school economy we just talked about. Yes, SVB catered too much to fancy-shmancy startups and cutesy crypto coins, but what killed SVB was a good old-fashioned run on the bank. And why was that? Because the SVB smart alecks made really bad investment decisions and those caused the bank to go bankrupt.
And what about all you big thinking startup guys who had all your dough in SVB and were wetting your pants you wouldn’t be able to get it out? Here’s a revolutionary concept for you to ponder. While you’re worrying so much about diversity, how about worrying about diversifying your assets so the US Government doesn’t have to use taxpayer money to save your sorry Silicon Valley asses?
Hey, you start-up savants, how about stop trying to reinvent the universe and start emulating successful people who’ve come before you.
As Jack Welch said, “People always overestimate how complex business is. This isn’t rocket science; we’ve chosen one of the world’s more simple professions.”
That’s straight from Jack’s gut and mine, too.