Unpacking the Twitter layoffs clusterfuck

Today’s Scatter Brain is brought to you by Secureframe

Secureframe helps companies achieve fast SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI, HIPAA, NIST, and GDPR compliance. With their guided workflows and one-click integrations, Secureframe automates the compliance process so you can focus on your customers, closing deals, and growing revenue.

Secureframe helps organizations respond to RFPs and security questionnaires quickly with AI. Get compliant in weeks, not months. Thousands of companies like AngelList, Fabric, Doodle, Dooly, Lob, Slab, and Stream trust Secureframe for automated security and privacy compliance.

Click here to chat with their team. Mention “Sar” during your demo to get 20% off your first year of Secureframe. Promotion available through December 31st, 2022.

You could argue that the internet does not need another Elon hot take on the Twitter saga. I would agree. It can get exhausting. Despite all the takes, there’s still a vacuum for milder takes we can learn from.

I recently spoke to Anchor co-founder Michael Mignano, who said the following when I asked him what he thinks is missing in the blogosphere :

We need more reasoned takes.

I have written about how I think the communications piece of the Twitter layoffs has been a total disaster.

Of course, I am no communications professional.

Today, I bring you perspectives of seasoned comms professionals on how they see what is going on at Twitter from a comms angle.

You’ll hear from:

Tanya Gillogley: Former Head of Comms at Better.com (resigned after the CEO bungled their layoffs)

Emilie Gerber: Founder of PR Agency Six Eastern (ex-comms at Uber, Box)

Priscilla Barolo: Former Head of Comms at Zoom (nine-year veteran)

Brian McGuigan: Director of Corporate Comms at Pacaso (ex-public affairs & comms at Whole Foods, Lyft)

Allison Braley: Former Operating Partner at Playground Global (ex-comms head at Fair, Canvas, ZocDoc)

A bunch of them have worked in media, at PR agencies, or have been involved with planning layoffs.

Sar: Layoffs are always hard. There’s no perfect way of doing them. The main character is a unique personality in unique circumstances. What do you believe was unavoidable, and what was avoidable?

Tanya: Between Zoom layoffs, the cringey fake crying CEO, and the canned statement on a company blog, 2022 has become the year of botched layoffs, with Elon Musk taking the cake in cruelty, callousness, and a complete lack of empathy or respect, and appreciation for the employees that built the very company he acquired.

While challenges and change are common when new owners take over a company, Twitter has become a bonafide circus under Elon Musk. There will be a profoundly negative impact on the company that will go beyond this news cycle. Musk has fired his PR team before, so it was clear from the moment rumors began swirling around his involvement at Twitter there would be a lack of respect, information withholding (which ultimately will be to Twitter’s detriment), and understanding of what the communications/PR function of a company does. The email that Twitter’s new leadership sent to staff on Thursday was uniquely cold, acknowledging that while this is “an incredibly challenging experience to go through,” the entire company should “ adhere to Twitter policies that prohibit you from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere.”

In other words, shut up and don’t leak to the press at a time when employees are grieving, scared, and rightfully angry.

Elon is a familiar breed type of CEO that views comms as just media relations, calling a journalist to mitigate bad press or change a narrative vs. a thought partner and team helping and strategizing on the 360 plan. The job of the comms team isn’t just to handle the media should there be fallout; it’s to advise the executive team on the best approach - we’re internal comms with external comms planning. While the comms team can’t influence business decisions, we should be looked at as partners in humanizing any internal and external communication and the risks of all scenarios involved.

Emilie: There's a fundamental lack of alignment between Musk and many of the employees working at Twitter -- this means some friction was inevitable. It was never going to be a completely smooth process because it was charged with competing values and heavy emotions.

The easiest thing that could've been done differently to mitigate the negative impact was putting someone in charge of all the operational aspects of the layoffs, sequencing employee communications, tech deprovisioning, and all the details that caused needless confusion and made the decision-making process appear hasty and haphazard -- not to mention the potential legal ramifications. It's clear he didn't have a senior partner managing the logistical rollout of his plan end-to-end, or if he did, someone messed up.

Instead of doing incremental layoffs over a year like many companies that have done several rounds of layoffs, he worked quickly, eliminating long-term uncertainty around the situation. While there are likely more layoffs to come, he's clearly striving to get it all done fast, which has benefits for a fresh start.

Priscilla: Not making every effort to communicate with employees directly, especially during times of transition, signals disrespect and weakness. It seems from employee Tweets last week that they received no clear communications from Musk before the layoff email. The choice to lay off so many people so quickly ties your hands logistically, hence the much-maligned personal/corporate email roulette approach. He could have made even this brutal maneuver marginally better by hosting a virtual all-hands to say it “to their faces” and signing the email.

Brian: You should always aim to break your own bad news and communicate with employees first. In this case, confirmation of layoffs and an inaccurate percentage surfaced in media coverage and weren’t addressed for a week, which is an eternity and unnecessary. They needed to say more about their plans to employees sooner. This was a huge miss that likely compounded with leaks from frustrated employees and created other comms challenges for the company.

Allison: It's tough to play armchair quarterback in this specific situation. Elon Musk is his own brand and notoriously doesn't employ comms people. It's almost impossible to imagine him sitting down and seeking counsel on how to communicate a massive layoff from his new comms team mere days after he took over Twitter. I have worked with members of the Twitter comms team who are among the best in the business, so I can guarantee this wasn't the way they wanted it to go down.

I don't doubt that a major headcount reduction was necessary. Tough decisions are part of being a leader, but as to whether or not the company was prepared, the rumor that Twitter is now asking people they let go by mistake to return speaks volumes.

When you conduct a layoff, you have to consider the internal comms strategy because it's the right thing to do and because if you're successful, you'll likely be hiring again in six months or a year. If you want to build a "hardcore engineering" culture, as Elon now claims to want to create at Twitter, how will you recruit top talent if you treated the prior team callously?

Sar: How do you assess the external comms of Twitter? What could have been done differently to have reasonably predictable different outcomes?

Emilie: Like several executives and politicians, there’s no way even the best comms person could have publicly changed what Musk says. Perhaps the right strategic comms partner could have provided a second, supplemental voice that adds more color to the facts and corrects rumors. Musk's replies are haphazard and often do not rhyme or reason, so a second person could provide a serious, nuanced, and strategic voice.

Priscilla: The external comms this past week, such as they are — tweets with half-truths, sloppy release notes, negotiating price with Stephen King, the memes — all come together to suggest that Musk has no idea what he’s doing, or just as bad, that he sees it all as a joke. If the comms had laid out a realistic go-forward plan in a single public document with a feasible roadmap and a set of principles that did not change daily (hourly?), that would have been a good start.

Brian: They have a lot of irons in the fire and a variety of spokespeople, whether authorised or not, sharing information on Twitter and to reporters. I appreciate the desire to move fast and be transparent about changes, but organisations are usually punished for communicating in this way. Take Twitter Blue as an example. First, it was $20/month. Then, it became $8/month because Stephen King didn’t want to pay $20. At the same time, we were still under the impression that they intended to lay off 75% of employees. That later became 50%. This iterative information sharing creates the perception with important audiences like employees, users, advertisers, and investors that leadership doesn't know what they’re doing, which I don’t think is the case. They’d be better served by limiting spokespeople, focusing on one big thing at a time, communicating once the details have been worked out, and clarifying media coverage if inaccurate. Organizing and executing all that is a role for the comms team, but reports indicate that the Twitter comms team consists of just two people today after the layoffs.

Allison: A humane, sober blog post (or, in this case, tweet thread) directly answering for the team's choice in reducing headcount goes a long way in demonstrating accountability and leadership from a CEO, whether or not they were the one who hired the team. Instead, we got PT Barnum-style stunts -- carrying a sink, sparring with Stephen King over pricing -- which, while entertaining, don't inspire many people to root for Twitter's success under its new leadership.

Sar: How have the insiders not persuaded him of better internal comms? Elon did manage to communicate with the advertisers in those public tweets.

Emilie: I don't think we should necessarily assume he was ever "against" doing this sort of communication to advertisers. I believe he knows their value and undoubtedly wants to protect those relationships. In his view, he probably saw striking a certain tone with advertisers to be more important than his tone with former employees.

Allison: Advertisers are Twitter's lifeblood, so it makes complete sense to prioritize them. Many would argue that Twitter's internal talent is of equal if not greater importance, but it doesn't appear that Musk agrees, or I'm sure he would have made internal comms a greater priority. He's a brilliant technologist. I have to assume these choices are deliberate, even if I completely disagree with the approach and view it as shortsighted.

Sar: How would you advise Twitter to course correct?

Emilie: Course correcting is going to be challenging. Musk hasn't even really changed the product yet, but individuals and advertisers have already sworn off the company -- there's a massive sentiment problem he must overcome. The "$8 Blue Checkmark" extravaganza has made people furious, but Musk has reassured his audience that he plans to lay out his entire rationale for the move before implementing it. This needs to happen sooner rather than later. The incremental information sharing has been a detriment, and so course correcting will require laying out thoughtful plans in their entirety. At least then - for better or worse - audiences can gain a complete picture of his vision and motives instead of guessing and assuming what we're forced to do now.

Priscilla: I offer him no comms advice as there’s no world where he’d take it.

Sar: What should other CEOs in tough situations learn from this saga?

Tanya: How you handle layoffs will make or break your company, reputation, and future workforce. In the case of Twitter, there’s advertiser (revenue) fallout, class action lawsuits, a grieving workforce, and worldwide scrutiny of how the situation was mishandled.

The takeaway is that employer branding and public perception are now the same, and there could be seriously negative fallout from layoffs going wrong. No matter how well it is done, there will be an impact on your internal culture. There’s no way around it. People who leave are upset, and the survivors feel the shock. And it can parlay into the business where customers are demanding responses.

The key for CEOs and founders is to lead with humanity and empathy, not ego. Work with your communications + PR teams to be radically freaking transparent: outline exactly what happened and what steps were taken to avoid it.

Priscilla: Comms can only be as good as the leadership and strategy they represent. My advice to other leaders: take his playbook and do the opposite. Show your stakeholders that you care about them, act with integrity, and have a realistic, carefully considered strategy behind your actions. When you do this, the comms tend to work out (as long as you don’t fire your comms team).

Brian: It’s no secret that Musk is skeptical of reporters and, by extension, the comms function. This is probably why layoffs so heavily impacted the Twitter comms team. While Twitter and Musk are unique, this transition unintentionally created a case study into what happens to a company without a comms team, or at least an empowered comms team, in a high-profile moment. It looks disorganized, and that disorganization has hurt the company's bottom line in the form of advertisers pausing spending.

Allison: Your heroes are deeply human. You may admire someone in an engineering or strategy context, but that doesn't make them a great leader in other areas like communications. You get to pick and choose what parts of someone you emulate. Layoffs are here to stay, unfortunately. Now that Stripe, Twitter, etc., have ripped off the RIF band-aid, more companies will follow. There's no good way to do a layoff and come off looking like a rockstar afterward. If it feels bad, that's because it should. But there are a few things that really matter:

Notification: I'm going to get flamed for this, but while it sounds like the right thing to do to tell each person you're letting go individually and in person, it's impossible in practice with larger layoffs. I've seen it attempted, and trust me, leaving people waiting at their desks all day to be called into an office to find out if they're staying or going is cruel. Add in our remote culture in 2022, and it's even harder. Embrace the big group meeting with everyone affected, followed by 1:1s with department heads. Respect your people enough to cut to the chase, but provide time for them to get additional clarity one-on-one.

Severance: Stripe made an effort to play fair, paying out 2022 bonuses and accelerating vesting, which was the right thing to do but also wise. In so far as there are skeletons in your company's closet (and let's face it, that's true of all startups), paying people fairly on the way out, if at all possible, will help those stay hidden.

Messaging: A great CEO will take responsibility, along with the leadership team, for the circumstances that led to a layoff. Yes, there are economic factors, but ultimately it was their choice to reduce headcount. I also love the trend of creating a spreadsheet of those affected and helping them find new roles actively, and I think every company should do this. After the layoff, give the remaining team the rest of the day to process the news, as they will be hurting for their colleagues and friends. The next day, hold an all-hands with live Q&A, and then the next week, host an all-hands to lay out the company's future. Pull no punches. How much runway do you have left? if you can’t promise no more layoffs down the line, don't. But also paint a vision for why those remaining should stick with you, and pay retention bonuses to top folks if you're in a position to do so.

Lastly, here’s what Sean Garrett, ex VP of Comms at Twitter from 2009-2011 era told me :

“Nothing about this situation is sensible or anywhere near the scope of what anyone would call a bad corporate communications screw up that others could learn from. It's on another level. There's crisis communications and then there is this."

Secureframe helps companies achieve fast SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI, HIPAA, NIST, and GDPR compliance.

Click here to chat with their team. Mention “Sar” during your demo to get 20% off your first year of Secureframe. Promotion available through December 31st, 2022.

I recently did another piece with a similar format but on the “SF is back” meme

Recent chats with founders :

Spining up products that move money without freaking out the CFO, with Daniel Yubi, CEO of Payable

Building smarter pipes for debt repayments, with Danielle Pensack, Cofounder of Rightfoot

Relocating for work and opening up borders, with Hanna Marie Asmussen, CEO Localyze

Recent chats with investors :

Michael Mignano, Partner at Lightspeed & Cofounder of Anchor

Hunter Walk, Partner at Homebrew