We both went to school in Pretoria in South Africa. I went to Christian Brothers College. He went to Pretoria Boys High School.
I was Head Prefect of my school and he wasn’t of his school.
He is the richest man in the world. I am not.
I do not want to work with him. Too stressful. Actually, ridiculously stressful.
In a very hard way, his clear vision of the future of the world drives all his big decisions and that drives down to the little decisions as well.
He is fiercely competitive which drive many of his tactics but not his vision, which predominates.
Algorithm
His success in driving down costs in his Spacex, Tesla, Giga Battery plant, X, Boring company and Neuralink all follow the same process – what he calls the algorithm.
1. Question requirements and deleting as many as possible. Go to the person that decided on the requirement and question intensely.
2. Delete any part of the process you can
With the above 2 items he expects that the cutting of requirements and steps in the process will be too severe and at least 10% will have to be added back, “BUT if none are added back it means that the team has not cut deep enough”, he says.
3. Simplify and optimize – but only after steps 1 and 2 else you will simplify steps that are not needed.
4. After step 3 – accelerate Cycle Time. Run a machine at maximum and pull back if needed.
5. Automate – this comes last! You do not want to automate unneeded steps.
People
A smaller number of passionate, committed experts with first principle thinking will be better than mediocre people by a factor of 20 or more. He applied this to X in which he trimmed software engineers from 2000 plus to 150 and X is still running. Not without hiccups.
People are fired mainly for not delivering or being seen not to want to deliver on his extraordinary objectives.
He fires mainly for not supporting in action or words his vision of what is possible, both at the macro and lowest level. Multiple times he has set unreasonable time frames and challenges and while all are not met, in each case the near impossible is achieved.
People achieve amazing things under his watch. While he drives them through ‘unreasonable’ objectives, it is the driven who come up with the solutions and implement most of the changes.
A surge is a focused drive to drastically improve something. Often it is a life and death (to a company) need, He participates in all the ‘surges’ by being on site, participating in all the meetings, walking the line and challenging, sleeping under his desk, or on the roof of Tesla in a tent. He works ridiculous hours and so do his people. 11 p.m cadence meetings are common.
People burn out and leave. Some get bored working elsewhere and return. A desire to balance the family/work equation is the most common cause for leaving, other than not being able to stand his harsh feedback and antics.
Family
He came from a most disruptive family with a severely flawed father. He shows some of those flaws in his own behaviour.
At this time he has 10 kids from various women. Some wives, some surrogates, some girlfriends.
He believes people need to have more children or else the collective human consciousness will die.
He spends a great deal of time in social settings playing computer games, not socializing. He likes best the games that require strategy. His competitiveness is always apparent in how he plays.
Trusted People
He has a circle of people from various phases of his life, including cousins and relatives that he trusts fully. The same applies to some key players in the establishment of his businesses and their growth.
He does not pigeonhole them and often gives them huge challenges that are not necessarily their strengths. Nonetheless they succeed because of the algorithm and their acceptance of his way of working.
There are some that he listens to and they can and have persuaded him off a crazy track. But not many.
He does listen to others. Not in an empathetic way (he scores zero on that front) but in a way that he is open to ideas, provided they do not conflict with physics laws. The physics will always win out with him. So will facts that are accurate.
Risk Taking
Let’s just say that he takes huge risks and he makes decisions quickly on complex matters, especially to do with matters of simplifying and reducing steps in a process.
He takes risks or develops solutions that are so far out of the box that the box is not visible.
He needed a whole new line for SpaceX. The building permit would take months. He realized that a tent does not need a building permit so his team got the world’s biggest tent made, erected it and had a line going in a couple months. We are talking about a tent that covers multiple football fields.
His idea is always to try it – if it fails, he believes, we learn quicker than spending hours and days debating and trying to reduce the risk. And failed he has numerous times, but always moved fast to learn and improve.
As I read the biography I found that I was amazed that health-wise he has survived. Little sleep. long days, poor eating habits, lack of exercise, no vacations all add up to a recipe for a health disaster. I think that this is his greatest risk.
Another Pretoria story
My sister-in-law, married to my eldest brother, had a printing business in Pretoria. Elon was a frequent customer and she shared that when he came into the printing shop he would just stand watching the machines at work in an almost trancelike way. I wonder what questions he pondered during those visits? I believe it is an indication of his forever present wondering about things.
Final Thoughts – what does this suggest for Middle Managers?
1. I have used his algorithm in process redesign work but never at the level of challenge that he applied. Process improvement can profit from more intense challenging of the way things are done.
2. While I cannot recommend his manic pace and demands, I believe that as managers we can become more ‘unreasonable’ in objective setting and requests for results.
3. Failing quickly and thus avoiding analysis paralysis is a good way to go. Just try something in a ‘not betting the whole company way’ (which Elon has done) and, if it fails, take the learning and try again.
4. The power of a constant vision is so strong in Elon. It led to the most valuable car company in the world, the most successful rocket company in the world among other successes. Neuralink is going to human trials now. The vision is to help paraplegics walk, for a start. As managers we can develop challenging visions that can make a difference. Let that drive our work.
5. Innovative ideas can come from asking what seem like stupid questions; How can I make a rocket ship for 10% of the NASA costs? How can the human brain control actions just by thinking? How can we half the cost of a service? How can we double sales in 6 months? How can we increase productivity year over year? So ask stupid questions and be ready to learn.
This article might interest you in regard to increasing productivity
Don’t just cut costs, Increase Productivity – Triumphant Managing
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