JPMorgan recently closed comments on an internal discussion about the return to office mandate. There’s backlash over this behavior but the reality is much more nuanced.
JPMorgan instituted a return to office mandate. Not surprisingly many employees complained, including on an internal discussion board. In response to such complaints, JPMorgan turned off commenting (see the Wall Street Journal article: JPMorgan Chase Disables Employee Comments After Return-to-Office Backlash).
There are valid arguments to be made for how often employees should be in the office and those arguments support anything from zero to five days a week. It depends on the nature of the work. Whether JPMorgan should require everyone in the office for five days or not is not under debate (not here anyway). The question is: should they have ended the debate by turning off comments? (Note: prior comments on the discussion board not deleted, new comments are simply prohibited.)
Many people are up in arms, claiming that it shows leadership is tone deaf. It’s easy to make that argument: if you don’t let employees speak, it shows that you don’t listen. Unfortunately, this conclusion comes from something of a straw man argument.
Let’s consider the opposite point of view. A commonly used management practice is disagree and commit. Debate and disagreement about a decision are welcome, even encouraged; but at some point, a decision needs to be made and once made everyone needs to move on. When the allies launched the D-Day invasion the call was made which began with the paratroopers landing in the early morning hours. Once they jumped off the plane the plan was in motion. Not acceptable would be for a general who disagreed with the choice of going ahead (it was bad weather that day) to say, “I’m not going to send in my troops to support the operation because I didn’t like the decision.” Once the invasion began everyone got behind it whether they agreed or not. The same is true for a NASA launch; someone who opposes the launch must, once the rocket is launched, do whatever it takes to make the mission a success.
Both of those are go / no-go decisions. A business decision, such as moving ahead with a partnership or new product line, isn’t so binary. You can cancel a partnership or choose to scale back, or even cancel, a product line. Nevertheless, a business can’t keep second guessing itself.
Imagine a corporate leader asking her team for input. A healthy debate ensued for a few weeks after which a decision was made. How do you think she would feel if in the weeks following that decision people kept debating the topic and telling her they disagreed? If there was new information it would be acceptable (e.g., “The test results came back and those lab monkeys are dropping like flies!”); but if it’s just the same arguments rehashed (e.g., “I still think we choose an ugly color for the new product”) that doesn’t help. In fact, it undermines the decision.
This is why at some point the debate must end. In the example above, the debate was a discussion in a team meeting, and it was clear when that decision was made. If someone kept bringing it up meeting after meeting it would be awkward, to say the least. For a company of over 300,000 people, not everyone may have understood that a decision was made (they certainly weren’t all part of the process); some may even continue to strongly disagree and voice either opinion. JPMorgan is simply encouraging the “commit” part of “disagree and commit” by preventing further discussion because people didn’t get the memo.
I can’t say whether five days a week is appropriate for JPMorgan. I also can’t say if there was sufficient input on the back to work mandate. Did they take enough voices into account? (Even then, note that JPMorgan isn’t a democracy, it’s a cheerocracy.) However the decision was made, whether the decision was right or not, even if the process was right or not, there comes a point, where a decision is made, and a company needs to move forward. It may not be the right way to do this for this topic but there’s nothing inherently tone deaf about ending a discussion and moving on.
I can’t say if the process or conclusion was correct in this case. I can’t even say if they were right or wrong to turn off comments in this case. What does hold is that not every topic should be an open-ended debate at a company. It’s a well-established practice for a company to say, “decision made, move forward,” and that action in and of itself is not inherently wrong. Like so much in business, the guidelines fall into “it depends. . .”.
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