Elon Musk is the textbook example of a workplace ‘seagull’

If you ever find yourself near the White House in Washington, DC, and hear a loud noise above you, you should be careful when looking up. Because there’s a chance, if you squint hard enough, that you might just witness a careless seagull flying away after unloading its dirty business all over the (now formerly) white walls.

Now, I’m not talking about an actual bird here, but the heavily foreshadowed exit by Elon Musk as his work leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) comes to an unceremonious end.

I’ve previously written about some of the most common animal archetypes you’re likely to find in most workplaces, including hippos, zebras and wolves. HiPPO stands for the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion that can dominate any meeting. ZEBRA means Zero Evidence But Really Arrogant who jumps to quick conclusions. And a WOLF is always Working On the Latest Fire.

On top of that, there are even more animals in the work menagerie, including a RHINO, or colleagues who are Really Here In Name Only and PARROTs that are Pretty Annoying and Ridiculously Repeating Others.

Which leaves us with the SEAGULL, or a Senior Executive that Always Glides in, Unloads and Leaves Loudly. Most people will recognise a seagull at some stage of their career, but if you want to see a textbook example of what this animal looks like in the workplace, look no further than the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.

After US President Donald Trump was elected, Musk swooped into one of the most complex bureaucracies in the world and unloaded on everything in his sight. From foreign aid to tax processing, diversity programs to national parks, everything was viewed from a great height with little time or care given to its consequences.

You’re never going to stop seagulls from swooping in on your work, but you can at least make the aftermath a little bit easier to clean up.

Arriving with an ambition to cut $US2 trillion ($3.1 trillion) from the US federal government, Musk is now leaving having reached just 8.75 per cent of his target, or $US175 billion of savings if you believe the higher end of the double-counting and dubious maths posted on DOGE’s official website.

Having made his mess in record time, he’s now retreating from the hard work involved with genuine reform, inspired no doubt by falling sales of Teslas around the world.

“Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in the conference/server/factory rooms” he tweeted this week about his return to his multiple companies. Pushing aside the unhealthy fetishisation of work from the same man who said that “working the weekend is a superpower”, this was confirmation that the seagull was flying away.

But here’s the thing about seagulls, they repeat their pattern over and over. Previous employees at Tesla have accused Musk of similar behaviour, including him visiting a newly finished section of a Gigafactory in Texas that had been completed in a frantic rush to meet his self-imposed deadline, only to be told that one of the walls they had just constructed needed to be rebuilt entirely of glass.

Seagulls make a lot of noise, and require you to clean up their mess, but there are still ways to manage them. If a senior executive swoops in on your project, try to get clarity on their expectations and how they are going to measure success, or failure, of their intervention.

Give them room to express their views, then create regular times to keep them informed after they’ve moved on. It’s also important to bring your team together after any disruptive episodes to ensure everyone can move on productively.

The US federal government – and the world – is going to spend the next few years dealing with the aftermath of Musk’s four-month experiment in instinctively cutting costs before thinking.

Real leadership requires a lot more than just bold claims and quick exits. It takes understanding, time, collaborating and a willingness to work within the messy realities of complex systems to effect long-lasting change.

You’re never going to stop seagulls from swooping in on your work, but with a clear head, you can at least make the aftermath a little bit easier to clean up.

Tim Duggan is author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter at timduggan.substack.com

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