Listen to your CEO. On Twitter
SteveA couple of days before he made bigger news by getting fired, then penning a cheeky letter to the troops letting them know what just happened, then-no-former Groupon CEO Andrew Mason, perhaps knee-deep in a frustrating Email session posted this Tweet:
Possible to write a gmail script to autoreply & bounce emails longer than fifty words?
— Andrew Mason (@andrewmason) February 25, 2013
Perhaps an extreme approach to dealing with Email and message length overload, but entirely out of the realm of useful utilities. We hate and need Email at the same time. I'd say for 99% of the people reading this post, Email is the single most important means of communication in your professional lives.
Don't think so?
Just try to go a day, week, month without Email. You can't do it.
You can forget Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn (at least until you need to look for a new job), literally for weeks and weeks and it probably won't really matter. Try that trick with email and you will probably get fired, lose business, or get reported to the police as a missing person.
But the point of this post isn't another 'email is horrible' riff, rather it is to call out a response to the former Groupon CEO's tweet, from a Groupon engineer no less, that was sent exactly one hour and one minute after Mason's original Tweet:
@andrewmason got something working: gist.github.com/rboyd/5027691 -- just customize variables to suit and schedule to run on a timer.
— Robert Boyd (@rboyd) February 25, 2013
Pretty amazing and awesome, and perhaps instructive as a clever method of sucking up getting the bosses attention in this new Age of Social Media. I have no idea if before he was ousted at Groupon if Mason had any kind of relationship, or even knowledge of Mr. Boyd - but let's pretend for a moment that they did not, and Mason (at that time), was the CEO and Boyd was just one of the rank-and-file staff working away, and personally invisible to Mason.
What better way to get on the big bosses radar than answering his Twitter question, within an hour, with a solution that works - and in the middle of the night?
Just another item to add to your bag of tricks as you try and climb up, over, or around the corporate ladder. If your CEO is on Twitter you ought to follow him/her. And maybe just maybe you can help your own career in the process.
Reader Comments (3)
Great post, Steve.
I actually do this sort of thing already. Not with the CEO, but to get the attention of other executives I've been known to draw a bit of (positive) attention to myself.
Peacocking is always a good idea. :-)
Thanks for sharing.
Best,
Rory
Good thinking Rory! Thanks for the comments!
Hi Steve! Good, rather provocative blog post, indeed! I was rather interested by this remark you shared above: "Just try to go a day, week, month without Email. You can't do it". Well, yes, you can! I have actually been doing that for over 5 years now as you would be able to see on this short YouTube video clip that explains the story. Also, you may be interested in reading more about the movement I started 5 years ago with "A World Without eMail", where you can read how it all got started and what's meant over the years. I am hoping this coming week to be sharing on my blog an update of what happened last year, plus also a rather interesting experiment I conducted throughout the whole year through on how much more effective these social technologies are with regards to emai... Stay tuned! :)