Elon Musk

Tesla is not a perfect company, and their CEO, Elon Musk is not afraid to let it be known.  He has been sleeping at the Tesla factory recently to help ensure production goals for his Model 3 electric car are met.  Tesla recently completed its third straight week of producing over 2,000 Model 3 cars, which is more than double its weekly production last year, but the goal is to produce 6,000 per week by the end of June 2018.  Production will be halted at Tesla’s two main factories for a few days in May to upgrade equipment, but the push is not all about machinery.

In a letter to Tesla employees on April 17, 2018 he gave the following productivity guidelines:

1. Large-format meetings waste people’s time.

“Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time. Please get [rid] of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short.”

2. Meetings should be infrequent unless a matter is urgent.

“Also get rid of frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency should drop rapidly once the urgent matter is resolved.”

3. If you don’t need to be in a meeting, leave.

“Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding value. It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time.”

4. Avoid confusing jargon.

“Don’t use acronyms or nonsense words for objects, software, or processes at Tesla. In general, anything that requires an explanation inhibits communication. We don’t want people to have to memorize a glossary just to function at Tesla.”

5. Don’t let hierarchical structures make things less efficient.

“Communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done, not through the ‘chain of command’. Any manager who attempts to enforce chain of command communication will soon find themselves working elsewhere.”

6. If you need to get in touch with someone, do so directly. 

“A major source of issues is poor communication between depts. The way to solve this is allow free flow of information between all levels. If, in order to get something done between depts, an individual contributor has to talk to their manager, who talks to a director, who talks to a VP, who talks to another VP, who talks to a director, who talks to a manager, who talks to someone doing the actual work, then super dumb things will happen. It must be ok for people to talk directly and just make the right thing happen.”

7. Don’t waste time following silly rules.

“In general, always pick common sense as your guide. If following a ‘company rule’ is obviously ridiculous in a particular situation, such that it would make for a great Dilbert cartoon, then the rule should change.”

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