An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”
1–10 of 77 posts
Re: An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”
#2I am definitely in favour of the notion of avoiding "management silos" but I would echo the sentiment left at the end that it seems to be much easier said than done in practice.
"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." I imagine someone in such a high position would then receive an influx of e-mails to the point where it is counter productive as they cannot address each one on top of the already ~100 hours of work?
I have never worked in an organization where this was the explicit rule established by the leader but maybe someone can shed some light on whether this practice has worked for them, or the challenges that comes with it?
Re: An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”
#3"Musk works about 100 hours per week at the electric carmaker"
7 / 100 = 14.3 hours a day. Or 100 / 5 = 20 hours a day. Does he not require food then? Or any non-work activities? Talk about hyperbole.
Re: An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”
#4I am definitely in favour of the notion of avoiding "management silos" but I would echo the sentiment left at the end that it seems to be much easier said than done in practice. "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." I imagine someone in such a high position would then receive an influx of e-mails to the point where it is counter…
Just because he receives emails doesn't mean he'll answer them all. He probably tries to fill some quota of 10 emails a day or something, then moves on to other things. As an employee, you would hopefully have the common sense to not email him about trivial matters anyway.
Re: An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”
#5"Musk works about 100 hours per week at the electric carmaker" 7 / 100 = 14.3 hours a day. Or 100 / 5 = 20 hours a day. Does he not require food then? Or any non-work activities? Talk about hyperbole.
So then how many hours does he spend with SpaceX?
Re: An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”
#6I am definitely in favour of the notion of avoiding "management silos" but I would echo the sentiment left at the end that it seems to be much easier said than done in practice. "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." I imagine someone in such a high position would then receive an influx of e-mails to the point where it is counter…
I think you've missed the main point of this rule. The rule enables you to communicate across the hierarchy, instead of having to traverse it.
For example: you can work directly with someone at the same level as you in another department without having to traverse the hierarchy. This is actually the opposite of the problem you highlight, as traversing the hierarchy often creates choke-points in senior management as they have to co-ordinate everything going through them.
Of course, it's good to keep management informed of important issues, but that's what the CC line is for!
Re: An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”
#7"Musk works about 100 hours per week at the electric carmaker" 7 / 100 = 14.3 hours a day. Or 100 / 5 = 20 hours a day. Does he not require food then? Or any non-work activities? Talk about hyperbole.
I'd imagine he has an impressively comprehensive team around him ensuring he doesn't need to focus on anything other than his work.
That said, working over 14 hours per day 7 days a week is implausible to me. Maybe in short bursts but I doubt he does that for any stretch of time.
The Elon Musk PR machine & cult of public enthusiasm is a massive business asset. When you're in the business of selling dreams to investors and employees pushing themselves to the limit this type of 'fact' is going to get thrown around.
Re: An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”
#8"Musk works about 100 hours per week at the electric carmaker" 7 / 100 = 14.3 hours a day. Or 100 / 5 = 20 hours a day. Does he not require food then? Or any non-work activities? Talk about hyperbole.
So then how many hours does he spend with SpaceX?
Another 80 per week. He just works quite long weeks.
Re: An email from Elon Musk to employees: “Communication Within Tesla”
#9I got "in trouble" at this one company for just doing my job. I walked onto the sales floor and asked a sales person if I can silently watch over their shoulder so I can learn about how the companies CRM was used. The sales manager felt I infringed on her team and complained to the lead programmer who in turn begrudgingly "warned" me not to do that ever again. I think I lasted like another 6 weeks there before putting in notice and leaving to a smaller company. All I wanted to do was identify ways to improve the crm, which was part of my job. But the team who made the software had no access to the team using the software