Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees
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Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees
#2Quoting from the article:
Btw, here are a few productivity recommendations:
– Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over
time. Please get of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to
the whole audience, in which case keep them very short.
– 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.
– 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.
– 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.
– 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.
– 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.
– 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.Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees
#3I'm pleasantly surprised by these rules
Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees
#4Quoting from the article: Btw, here are a few productivity recommendations: – Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time. Please get of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short. – Also get rid of frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency s…
The part about nonsense words is great (one of my pet peeves) but how do you accomplish that in practice? Everything has to have a name. For example, when you're developing Windows 8 what would you call Metro Mode? "Alternate touch optimized desktop UI" is a bit of a mouthful.
Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees
#5Quoting from the article: Btw, here are a few productivity recommendations: – Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time. Please get of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short. – Also get rid of frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency s…
Some of these I really like, and some of them are well-intentioned but seem disconnected from reality.
- Communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done
This sounds like a great idea, however it can lead to things like the CEO pinging engineers to fix problems he doesn't fully understand. I've seen this happen often, and it's really annoying how often we have to tell the CEO he can't do this (extremely important people have already quit because of it).
I love the idea about walking out of meetings though, and just minimizing them as much as possible.
Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees
#6Quoting from the article: Btw, here are a few productivity recommendations: – Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time. Please get of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short. – Also get rid of frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency s…
The part about nonsense words is great (one of my pet peeves) but how do you accomplish that in practice? Everything has to have a name. For example, when you're developing Windows 8 what would you call Metro Mode? "Alternate touch optimized desktop UI" is a bit of a mouthful.
I'd call it the Touch UI, the others could be Windowed and Mobile.
Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees
#7Quoting from the article: Btw, here are a few productivity recommendations: – Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time. Please get of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short. – Also get rid of frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency s…
The part about nonsense words is great (one of my pet peeves) but how do you accomplish that in practice? Everything has to have a name. For example, when you're developing Windows 8 what would you call Metro Mode? "Alternate touch optimized desktop UI" is a bit of a mouthful.
Metro's branding was a failure of imagination and a failure to properly capture and convey intent. There are many other options out there:
| "Touch UI" | "Mobile UI" | "Everywhere UI" | "Fisher-Price UI" |
... or my personal favorite...
| "Mega-Bloks" |
Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees
#8I really like the tips themselves. Though, I must admit I do get a chuckle out of taking productivity tips from someone notorious for working 80 hours a week. Not that my accomplishments hold a candle to his. It's just funny in some part of my brain.
Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees
#9Quoting from the article: Btw, here are a few productivity recommendations: – Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time. Please get of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short. – Also get rid of frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency s…
Having worked at companies with a 6+ hour long retrospective, planning meeting that was almost entirely useless - I would love the idea.
However, at my current job we frequently have little meetings here and there post-standup for clarification, discussions, analysis, of issues, etc. Frequently they do not apply, but I do not find myself willing to leave despite explicitly being told I do not have to be there.
It's hard to walk out of a meeting, when you know how it looks, because your manager is the one to handle everything from vacation requests to promotions. Building up "social credit" greases the wheels later on when you are the one who needs something. Unless your manager is a proponent of the policy, you're fighting the tide.
Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees
#10Quoting from the article: Btw, here are a few productivity recommendations: – Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time. Please get of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short. – Also get rid of frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency s…
The part about nonsense words is great (one of my pet peeves) but how do you accomplish that in practice? Everything has to have a name. For example, when you're developing Windows 8 what would you call Metro Mode? "Alternate touch optimized desktop UI" is a bit of a mouthful.
I think pretty much every industry and field quickly develops it's own stock of acronyms, nicknames, jargon etc. This can feel alienating to "outsiders", which is why people don't like it, but I think its pretty necessary (and inevitable). If you're working with a set of concepts, processes, software everyday, developing a shorthand way of talking (and thinking) about them is a big timesaver both in terms of communication and mental effort.