Home ›› 12 Oct 2021 ›› Opinion
Elon Musk is a physicist, entrepreneur, and inventor.
As well as founding PayPal, Hyperloop, and OpenAI, he’s the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors — and he’s one of the world’s richest people. A tweet containing several tips on how to up productivity in your company was originally published in an email Musk circulated to staff at Tesla.
Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time, Musk said. Please get rid of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience.
If you’re certain they’re offering something to the entire audience, he still recommends keeping them short.
Meetings at companies are often too long, but also too often, according to the Tesla co-founder.
That’s why you should avoid frequent meetings unless the matter concerned is “extremely urgent.”
“Meeting frequency should drop rapidly once the urgent matter is resolved,” he says. In many places, leaving a meeting abruptly might be construed as disrespectful but Musk suggests it’s ruder not to. “Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding value,” says Musk. “It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time.”
Though Musk’s advice is with reference to his own company, the same recommendations can be applied to your own. “Don’t use acronyms or nonsense words for objects, software, or processes at Tesla,” he says. “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.” While many might be concerned about disrespect or severing ties, Musk suggests that respecting the “chain of command isn’t always the best port of call when communicating about something.
“Communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done, not through the ‘chain of command’,” Musk says. “Any manager who tries to impose chain of command communication will soon find himself working elsewhere.”
“One of the main sources of problems is poor communication between departments,” Musk says.
He says this can be solved by allowing “free flow of information between all levels.” “If, in order to get something done between [departments], 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,” he warns.
“If following a “company rule” is obviously ridiculous in a particular situation ... then the rule should change,” says Musk. “In general, always pick common sense as your guide.”
Businessinsider
