Motivational Memos & Dyslexic Thinkers
5 in 5 - Brave & Heart HeartBeat #159 ❤️
This week we’re watching Linda Yaccarino bat it out of the park as Twitter’s new CEO, but will she be able to undo the mess Elon Musk made with Twitter staff?
Plus, Apple step it up a notch in the Apple vs. Android Wars, Mark Zuckerberg continues being Spock, AI can’t save us from burnout, and how Dyslexic Thinkers can take your business to the next level.
Let’s get into it.
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#1 Introducing Twitter’s New CEO – Linda Yaccarino
Newly appointed Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino just sent out her first employee memo, and it’s a masterclass in employee motivation – in stark contrast to Elon Musk’s “tough love” approach.
We’ve touched in previous newsletters on the mass exodus Twitter faced when Musk took over, and we believe it was largely due to his management style. Used to people joining companies like SpaceX and Tesla having already bought into his vision and mission, when he took over Twitter he didn’t make any effort to get people on board.
He asked the Twitter team to work themselves to the bone for his vision or leave, without offering any encouragement or deigning to explain himself.
Yaccarino’s memo started off with a little ode to Elon Musk. If staff are going to rally behind her as CEO, they need to still respect the man at the top, especially as Twitter will still be following his goal of radical free speech as the “global town square”.
She then starts fresh. She notes that Twitter 2.0 starts now, not a few months ago when Elon Musk made everyone’s life a living hell and fired a million people, but now. She highlights the need to “believe” in Twitter, and “work hard for that belief”. Trying to create a shared goal by repeating - in bold or all caps no less - words like “our” and “together”.
With phrases like “we need to think big” and “Twitter 2.0 is our responsibility” she brings the team together around one goal, emphasising her belief in them with the phrase “you’re built for this”. A bit corny, a bit presumptuous, but potentially effective.
Our favourite bit is the ending phrase – “let’s dig our heels in (4 inches or flat) and build Twitter 2.0 together” – where she gives a subtle little shout-out to the women in the Twitter team, reminding everyone that tech is no longer a boy’s club.
#2 - The Green Bubble 2.0
It’s hard to remember a time before the population was split up into two distinct groups. Those with blue message bubbles, and second-class citizens - the green bubbles.
As we all know, a blue bubble around your message means that you have an iPhone or are sending your message from an apple device, while the green signifies you’re using a – shock horror - Android phone.
Have you ever wondered if Apple did that on purpose? Spoiler alert, they did. The blue bubble has become synonymous with being in a club. We’ve even heard of people getting the “ick” when they find out their date has a green bubble rather than a blue one. Harsh.
It’s not just the colour either, Apple have been slowly ensuring that green bubbles feel like a worse kind of message. You can’t see when the other person is typing, the photos and videos they send are tiny, and messages aren’t encrypted.
When an iPhone user once asked at a tech conference if Apple would be making android messages better so it was easier for his mother, not an Apple customer, to send him videos, Tim Cook suggested he buy her an iPhone. Problem solved.
Sources say it is possible, they just choose not to do it.
The Verge describe it as the “Apple versus Android war”, and Apple are stepping it up a notch with their newest update. Their new “Contact Poster” feature on iOs 17 allows you to choose a photo of yourself that fills the entire screen and the font your name will be shown in when you call people or they call you.
Very fancy, and very not cool if you don’t have one. Do you want to interact with the person on Facebook without a profile photo? No, and that’s who Android users are about to become.
#3 AI Assistants For Being A Friend
This is by far our favourite story this week, because it is SO so painfully Mark Zuckerberg.
In a recent appearance on a podcast with a guy in a suit (and that’s the nicest thing we can say about him) Mr Z discussed his upcoming plans with AI, which include an assistant to help you be a better friend.
He apparently hopes to deploy a hefty and diverse range of Large Language Models which, unlike OpenAI’s GPT models, are “fine-tuned” to different needs - of which one is companionship.
His ideal AI assistant would help you through “all of life’s challenges” and he thinks that AI is a social technology that can help people better express themselves “in situations where they would otherwise have a hard time doing that.”
He compared adults to his new-born and toddler, who cry because they can’t express themselves, and thinks AI is the cure, describing it as a social technology that can help us “navigate social complexity.”
So, to sum it up, he thinks that AI can help people be better at… being people.
To be fair, he did also mention that the AI assistant will be able to help make ads for your business, and as anyone who has tried to use Facebook ads will know, you need all the help you can get. Sure, making it more user friendly could work, but creating an AI assistant to solve that problem is much easier.
Again, proof that what Mark Zuckerberg thinks the world needs, is usually just what Mark Zuckerberg needs.
#4 - AI And Burnout, A Cure Or A Curse?
We’ve heard a lot about how AI will help us at work, not by taking our jobs, but by taking away the worst parts of them.
By allowing us to automate certain parts of work like sorting through emails or writing meeting summaries, and acting as an “assistant” to help with busywork, some early research has already shown a spike in productivity.
There’s an idea that this could then lead to less burnout at work. Surely if we all had an assistant, our jobs would be easier, right?
And yet. The risk is that as workers use these AI tools to increase productivity, lightened workloads and less donkey work may not actually allow workers to take a breath, but create space to be filled up with even more work.
Unless you’re a freelancer, AI may not lighten your workload so much as simply change it. If your boss knows you have nothing else on your plate but pure productivity, they’re likely to expect more from you, not less - and that increased pressure can be a fast track to burnout.
While a poll showed that those suffering from burnout did often attribute it to working long hours or too many meetings and calls, pressure from leadership was also up there with the top culprits.
Psychologists have described burnout as having six causes, of which only one is work overload. The other causes include lack of control, insufficient rewards, breakdown of community, absence of fairness and value conflicts.
Burnout has as much, if not more, to do with the company culture in which you work than the actual work itself. In the same way, it isn’t AI itself but rather the way in which your company uses it which will define how it will affect burnout among employees.
#5 - Dyslexic Thinking
In a context where diverse abilities are being recognised more in the workplace, a recent study published by Made By Dyslexia and shared on LinkedIn underlines the benefits neurodivergent workers can have for your business, and the gap between how HR leaders think they are accommodating Dyslexic Thinkers and their actual lived experience.
Dyslexic Thinkers have enhanced abilities in areas like discovery, invention and creativity, and have been proven to display exceptional capability in currently trending skills that companies need for the future – leadership, social influence, analytical thinking, active learning and problem solving.
Forty percent of the world’s greatest innovators are Dyslexic Thinkers, including Richard Branson and Steve Jobs, and in 2022 LinkedIn added Dyslexic Thinking as a skill.
According to the study, while many HR leaders feel that their business has progressed leaps and bounds in becoming a dyslexia friendly workplace, the lived experience of Dyslexic Thinkers belies that, and recruitment, and especially retention, of Dyslexic Thinking workers remains low.
The organisation aims to redefine Dyslexic Thinking as a valuable thinking skill, rather than a difference that may hold them back, and they share workplace resources and provide formal training to help change perceptions and unlock the skills of Dyslexic Thinkers.
Brave & Heart over and out.
Bonus
Snake On Spotify
Spotify have a hidden little gem in the form of a playable snake game called “Eat This Playlist” - available right at the bottom of the options menu.
As Peter Ramsay, self-professed UX enthusiast, notes on LinkedIn, while this feature doesn’t increase upsell, increase retention or really have any use at all, what is does do is bring us joy.
And thankfully, sometimes, that’s enough.
To find out more on how you can retain your top talent, or how we can help you with digital solutions to your business and marketing challenges, check out our case studies.