EMAIL sent by ELON MUSK to his EMPLOYEES at the START of the NEW YEAR
Tesla's meteoric rise to stardom has been mainly due to its eccentric and charismatic founder and CEO Elon Musk. Many believe that Elon's rare business skills is due to winning the ovarian lottery which gave him a photographic memory. Following is the email that Elon Musk sent to his employees at the start of the year, a testament to how effective or ineffective he is as a leader:
There are two schools of thought about how information should flow within companies. By far the most common way is chain of command, which means that you always flow communication through your manager. The problem with this approach is that, while it serves to enhance the power of the manager, it fails to serve the company.
Instead of a problem getting solved quickly, where a person in one dept talks to a person in another dept and makes the right thing happen, people are forced to talk to their manager who talks to their manager who talks to the manager in the other dept who talks to someone on his team. Then the info has to flow back the other way again. This is incredibly dumb. Any manager who allows this to happen, let alone encourages it, will soon find themselves working at another company. No kidding.
Anyone at Tesla can and should email/talk to anyone else according to what they think is the fastest way to solve a problem for the benefit of the whole company. You can talk to your manager's manager without his permission, you can talk directly to a VP in another dept, you can talk to me, you can talk to anyone without anyone else's permission. Moreover, you should consider yourself obligated to do so until the right thing happens. The point here is not random chitchat, but rather ensuring that we execute ultra-fast and well. We obviously cannot compete with the big car companies in size, so we must do so with intelligence and agility.
One final point is that managers should work hard to ensure that they are not creating silos within the company that create an us vs. them mentality or impede communication in any way. This is unfortunately a natural tendency and needs to be actively fought. How can it possibly help Tesla for depts to erect barriers between themselves or see their success as relative within the company instead of collective? We are all in the same boat. Always view yourself as working for the good of the company and never your dept.
Thanks,
Elon
This is what leads Tesla from the pack imo.
Very cool. I love this statement. Elon recognizes the fact that information flows faster when we remove the social barriers that impede this transfer of info. I think it's incredibly wise and empowers the company as a whole.
Totally agree! By creating a less hierarchical organization, the company can work together on all level of the organization to reach a common goal. It creates transparency and the employees can be more engaged with their work if they know what the company would like to achieve.
He’s a man of great inspiration and leadership. Would be interesting to see how being an employee for him is... you are helping make history especially at Tesla and spacex
Tesla's meteoric rise to stardom has been mainly due to its eccentric and charismatic founder and CEO Elon Musk and being a darling of the left and recipient of huge government contracts.
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Nice sir
Thank you for sharing this. Appreciated, really.
Again Elon Musk showing how things should be done.
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Very good post
resteemed it @catalina10 because this is litteraly how our first meeting in the year sounded like. The hardest job in a company for the entrepreneur is to find the appropriate balance betwen the time dedicated to the everyday challendges and the vision he/she has. To be near your team constantly can mean the direction you want is followed, but it also means you limit the responsability and the growth of each individual, his skills for decision making and in building work relationships to grow the company. So yeah, thank for this.