One Bad “Policy Change” Email Can Kill Company Culture
I totally agree that how one communicates influences corporate culture, and the second email is a better communication than the first.  They both suggest to me, though, a company which reaches for a broad, expensive technological (+) solution to solve a narrow, cheap people problem.<p>+ There might not be code involved, but you're imposing a state machine, so it's tech even if it is taught in the business school.<p>How you communicate policy changes is important, but if your communication includes "How do we massage the fact that we know this is going to inconvenience everyone in our organization regarding one of the core benefits they perceive from working here?", <i>communication is not the problem</i>.  The only corporate culture problem there is that the hypothetical CEO did not say "As custodian of the corporate culture, I think that working-from-home is too important to us to touch.  What other options do we have?"<p>(One possible solution: If three people with different managers are routinely ducking meetings that have to take place, have three quiet conversations.  Another possible solution: if three people with different managers are routinely ducking meetings, have three quiet conversations with their managers about how any person who can be optimized out of a meeting should be because their time is valuable.)<p>[Edit: It occurs to me that I glossed over the point in the blog post where they actual business rationale is presented: "Company X has been having trouble with abuse of work-from-home privileges. Managers are finding that more and more people are getting less accomplished and a primary suspect is a lack of coming into the office."  I had gotten my understanding of the problem, like employees, from the second email.  If that is indeed the business rationale, I revise my opinion of the second email: it is terrible <i>because it is lying to me</i>, in a way which makes the policy seem insane.  Hilariously, when I read it now I find myself actually <i>distrusting the hypothetical problem statement</i> -- which is dicta for the purpose of this exercise -- because in light of being lied to I find myself thinking "Management, who we have established are liars, are probably too incompetent to actually measure people's productivity.  I wonder what the <i>real</i> reason for this is?"]