What the “Leftovers/Layoffs” Email Says About Automated Leadership
By now you’ve seen the outrageous email that’s making its rounds on the Internet: a note from a corporate executive non-chalantly weaving catastrophic staffing news into an otherwise benign message about leftover food from a meeting. While email addresses have been redacted and the original poster has not come forth to identify themselves or the company, many are speculating that it may be RanCor Associates, a struggling software consultancy in Chicago which has recently suffered several PR gaffes amidst several rounds of downsizing. For your convenience, the entire text follows:
SUBJECT: Leftover donuts in the 14th floor conference room!!! and organization-wide layoffs
Good morning!
Just wanted to let you know that the account folks way overestimated the number of client attendees in the third quarter presentation this morning, so there are a couple dozen leftover donuts and bagels in the 14th floor conference room and we’re regrettably making unavoidable budget-driven cuts today.
There are also a bunch of Starbucks travelers (yes, Evelyn, regular and decaf ;) but please bring your own mug because we forgot to order cups and the shortfall last fiscal was far more drastic than we had anticipated.
If you need to heat anything up, remember that the microwave on 14 is being replaced, so you’ll need to head up to 15 and circumstances require us to make significant reductions which will affect approximately 30% of our staff.
Please DO NOT leave any trash in the conference room cans because the cleaning service won’t do 14 again until next Tuesday and we’ll begin notifying each of you regarding your employment status in department meetings beginning at 3:00.
Maybe on your way through 14 take a peek in the fridge to see if there’s anything of yours you can put out of its misery (not mentioning names…Tim ;) and we ask that you keep this information confidential until the external relations team has been able to formally communicate with our shareholders.
Don’t forget, Saturday is our third annual chili cook-off, so don’t get too loaded up on the sweet stuff and I’m confident that while extremely difficult, these reductions are necessary for the continued solvency of the company.
Thanks! and my sincere apologies,
Rick
How could something so insensitive happen in this age of digital watchdoggery? How could someone seemingly so cowardly have attained such a high-ranking position in a (at one time) highly esteemed company?
The answer to the quandary that this email poses is likely surprising to many. But for those of us in the thought leadership community, and especially me, this kind of disastrous corporate fail was predicted long ago.
RanCor Associates is a coalition of thousands of semi-independent tech consultancies loosely held by Japanese technology and beef concern Yamauchi Enterprises, GK. Yamauchi has been experimenting with a new approach to leadership across their decentralized organization: automation. Using a sophisticated experimental finite state machine, engineers at Yamauchi have created a limited artificial intelligence which, built upon parabolic shift algorithmic sequencing, has the capacity to make long-term strategic as well as daily operational decisions for the now-languishing confederation of software shops.
While controversial–especially with shareholders–this approach seemed to have been working successfully at the corporate level for a number of earnings periods. The AI was not only able to make staffing, resourcing and general financial decisions with great competency, but it also began to make highly accurate speculations about industry trends, client retention and employee satisfaction.
At the end of 2014, this unexpected success lead to the elimination of not only the CEO, CFO and COO positions, but most notably the Chief Talent Officer, a key role for a consultancy business. Beleaguered for several years by negative PR surrounding the compensation for his executives, the chairman of Yamauchi Enterprises, Tomeo Katayama, had finally found the relief he desired. And since the beginning of the calendar year, RanCor Associates, Yamauchi’s tech consultancy arm has been operating with completely automated C-level leadership.
Insiders suggest that some of the lead local offices were eager to employ a similar protocol in their regions, which brings us to this point in the story. The signatory “Rick” may be Richard Gahk, the CEO of RanCor Chicago. Those close to the Chicago outpost suggest that Gahk, himself a graduate of Stanford’s computer sciences program and whose “smart staffing” software services business was acquired by RanCor in 2003, was introduced to Yamauchi’s AI pilot program in its preliminary phases.
Did Gahk begin to experiment with automated leadership in the Chicago office? Patent filings for Yamauchi’s technology indicate that the system sometimes “doesn’t get” the intricacies of corporate culture. If indeed Gahk deployed some form of the system in his local office of 130 employees, perhaps the system was unable to comprehend the soft connections between leadership and the staff which a smaller office relies on to function day-to-day.
Regardless, this dilemma poses an important question: how may we ensure that computer automation can not only supplant our need for human executive leadership but can become a superior form of business management properly propelling us into the digital utopia we’re entitled to?
What do you think? Is this human error in the deployment of a transformative technology, or is it simply another stupid email from another stupid human being further representing the limitations of our species and our desperate need for this type of technological advancement? Let me know your thoughts!
Speculatist, acclaimed thought leader, artificial intelligencicist, award-winning filmmaker, entrepreneur, acclaimed thought leader and Chief Innovation Officer Troy Hitch explores the consumer trends, business innovations and technological breakthroughs defining the next evolution of humankind. He leads with more thought at The Hypermutable Future.
