Poor Clark
Sometimes in my idler moments, I have wondered if I could be a political figure. Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages prove beyond doubt that it is not.
Leaked messages Hancock wrote as UK Health Secretary during the pandemic have appeared almost every day this month in London’s Daily Telegraph. They are fascinating.
“Leaked messages from the unfortunate former UK Health Secretary suggest that this could be true.”
I await each new leak with the same enthusiasm that I imagine Charles Dickens fans showed when new chapters of “The Pickwick Club Posthumous Papers” were published. The result is that I have been reminded of the terrible self-promotion and basic impropriety behavior that pervades the upper echelons of political life.
“The credit must be mine,” Hancock told an aide early in the pandemic, as the two conspired to ensure he received maximum credit for the rollout of a vaccine other ministers were helping to develop.
“Alok shouldn’t get the credit!” Hancock declared some time later, upon learning that he could be upstaged by then-Business Secretary Alok Sharma with the news of a vaccine breakthrough. “I know, I’m worried,” replied his adviser.
Hancock also delivered the happy news that the Covid crisis could kick-start his career “to the next level.” And he discussed the idea of threatening to lock down a learning disability center in a fellow Tory’s constituency to pressure the MP to vote for new lockdown rules.
Threats like this are part of the political turmoil that is not appropriate for most of us. But Hancock’s messages also reveal with startling clarity what goes on in much of normal working life. Detestable careerism. desperate rivalry. conspiracies. Deception. Flattery.
And his messages raise a haunting question for WhatsApp’s two billion users: Has this ubiquitous app made work any more unpleasant than it was before the pandemic?
There are reasons to say yes, and Hancock’s missives help explain why. Most were written at the height of the pandemic when there was an abrupt change in the way people communicated at work. The impact of sudden lockdowns increased, and changed, internal communication.
“The connections at work have been strengthened,” says Ben Waber, chief executive of Humanyze, a US software company that tracks behavior in the workplace.
Crucially, Waber says, those ties were especially deep between people on the same teams who, as Hancock’s posts show, were prone to chatting informally.
At that time, WhatsApp is introduced, an application that excels in both social chat and easy-to-configure messaging groups.
The pandemic may have faded, but it spurred WhatsApp-enhanced communication patterns that are, unfortunately, still with us.
Consider the exclusion. I doubt I’m the only office worker who (a) belongs to more WhatsApp groups today than before Covid hit and (b) has no idea who else belongs to what.
Having been in the same organization for many years, the thought of being ostracized from countless other groups doesn’t bother me too much. But it might be if I was a newcomer, especially if I suspected my manager or team were in a group I’d been left out of. Or if he was regularly doomed to endure that other pandemic legacy, the Zoom call.
A friend who is also obsessed with the Telegraph’s WhatsApp leaks says she felt a pang of guilt reading the messages between Hancock and an adviser while the two were in an online meeting with then-Education Secretary Sir Gavin Williamson. “He’s not exactly collaborative, is he?” says Hancock. “He’s acting crazy,” says the adviser. “Everyone looks very uncomfortable on the call.”
My friend does the same thing during work Zoom calls. She is not the only one.
There is also the overabundance of channels. Before the pandemic, it was already hard to know if it was best to contact someone via email, text, Slack, or any of the other messaging options circulating in the office today. WhatsApp groups add more confusion and division.
As Waber says, tight-knit teams can be more reliable and better at getting things done quickly, but they also tend to think in a group.
Group loyalty was around long before the pandemic or messaging apps. Just like office gossip. But a workplace torn by dozens of feverish WhatsApp group discussions isn’t necessarily happy. And if those discussions ever leak out to the rest of the world, life could be a lot more miserable. Just ask Hancock.
