How to become as succesful as Elon Musk
The art of delegation in 5 simple Steps
“I am selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house.”
It was a tweet that shook the world. Isn’t the point of being a billionaire to own things?
But Elon musk is a pretty quirky guy. What other billionaire has publicly said that they’d liquidate all their assets? Which CEO has said publicly that their own stock was overpriced? How many people have built not one, not two, not three, but FOUR billion dollar companies?
What is his secret? While it is undoubtedly true that Musk is highly intelligent, incredibly business-savvy and a possessor of a unique brand of charisma, I think his genuine secret is Gwynne Shotwell, Zachary Kirkhorn
Who are these people?
COO of SpaceX and CFO of Tesla.
Success is not, it never is, a lonely road.
Elon Musk’s superpower is the fact that he delegates. Even perhaps the most brilliant entrepreneur of our age only has 24 hours a day. The only way to achieve so much in this world is by relying on others. Contrary to popular belief, success is not, it never is, a lonely road.
I can’t teach you to be smarter. I’m not the best person to tell you how to become a visionary. I don’t know how to build anything with my hands. But I can teach you how to delegate. I can show you the superpower that allows Musk to be on the cutting edge of 5 or 6 different technologies, the power that has allowed me to combine over 200 of my staff into a cohesive business, and the power that will allow you to do more than you could ever have done by yourself.
It’s simple really — just 5 straightforward steps.
- Realise you can’t do everything.
Every entrepreneur feels like they can do everything. I think in some sense the thrill of starting a business appeals to a certain type of people, the type of people who love challenges and learning new things and feel that nothing is beyond them. And when a business is starting out, you often have to do everything.
I’m one of those people. I love to speak, I love to sell, I love to manage, I love to strategise, I love to code, and as I’m sure you can see — I love to write as well. For me, life is one big forest of adventure and I want to try all of the fruits it has to offer.
You can’t be a one person team forever
But one thing to realise, one thing that I learnt after many trials and failures, is that you can’t be a one person team forever. Whatever you do, unless you’re an academic (or Google fellow) at the very cutting edge of your field, there will be someone who is more specialised than you. I think there’s abit of a mystique around these people, where these people are celebrated for their deep intellect. (Seriously, think about most intelligent thing someone has said to you — it’s usually a deep statement made by a true expert in their field (otherwise it’s a trivial statement that you feel you ought to have realised)).
Being a generalist is a skill as well
And this is good — because you don’t get to the top of your specialisation without special skill. But one thing I’ve learnt, from all my years in business, is that being a generalist is a skill (a highly underrated one, at that) as well. All managers are more general than those below them — it’s no coincidence that the highest ranking military officer is called a general.
If you want to manage a large business — or even a small team, you must accept being a generalist. And because you’re not the smartest person in the world (I’m sorry) — it means you won’t be the best at everything. But that’s OK — because you can delegate to specialists.
2. Understand that you’ll have to give up things that you’re great at
This point is similar to 1, but different enough that it warrants a separate point. I think entrepreneurs usually come to terms with 1 at some point. They hire some experts, they pass on their work, they build a solid team — and they still find they have too much to do!
The reason? They still do too much. Having started their business, they know the ins and outs of processes, the technology, the vision, the product. They don’t think anyone will be able to do these tasks as well as they could.
[Delegation] opens up your time to focus on things that only you can do
And you know what? They’re right. The second stage of delegation is understanding that you will have to give up things that you are best at. In Economics, this falls under the theory of comparative advantage — the idea is that you can build successful business by delegating to people who are less skilled than you in a certain area, because it opens up your time to focus on things that only you can do.
Look at our good friend Elon again — he’s by all accounts a fantastic engineer, as well as a innovative business strategist — but he knows that only he can tell the story and vision of his company. And so he does — delegating away the rest of the work, even those that he is exceptional at.
3. Find the right person to delegate to
Having accepted that you will have to delegate, and that you will have to do so even for tasks that you are superb at, you might think that everything is straightforward. Unfortunately, this is not true. I would say that step 3 is the most difficult step.
You need to find the correct person to delegate to. While in 2, it is made clear that you will need to delegate some tasks to people who are less proficient than yourself, there does need to be a baseline level of competence.
In his great book, the 1 page Marketing Plan, Allan Dib suggests that you should delegate once you find someone who is 80% as proficient as you in a task. I think that this is a great rule of thumb that has served me well, but I’d like to expand on it slightly.
Find someone who is 1. Dedicated 2. Experienced 3. Learning-focussed.
My framework for finding someone to delegate to is that they must satisfy what I term the DEL requirements— you need to find someone who is 1. Dedicated — they need to be willing to put in as much effort as you did, 2. Experienced — here is where the 80% proficiency rule comes in. They need to have sufficient (not necessarily as much as your level) experience so that they will be able to handle issues that arise competently, and 3. Learning-focussed — they need to be open to learning as much as they can both before and after you’ve handed off the role to them.
Missing any of these three ingredients usually leads to an unsuccessful delegation — the entrepreneur usually has to take back the role, having wasted both time and money. Make sure you delegate to the right person!
4. Trust!
You just gotta trust!
Once you’ve picked the right person to delegate to, the next part is physically very easy, but mentally extremely hard. You just gotta trust!
Trust your person. Give them space. Let them make their own mistakes. You have spent a long time in part 3 finding the correct person. Now you must step back and let them do the job that you assigned for them.
If you crowd over them, if you micromanage them — then you end up doing as much work as you did before. And if that’s the case, that person might as well not be there.
But what if you see mistakes? You should consider the timeline their goals are set on (are they responsible for goals on the weekly, monthly or quarterly scale?). I think a good rule of thumb is to intervene after one tenth of that timeline. So, if the goals are set on a monthly basis, you should intervene after (30/10 = ) 3 days if you don’t see any action towards fixing a mistake.
Trust your people! They will repay that in spades!
5. Manage and create a feedback loop
Though trust is important, you do need a mechanism to manage your staff, coordinating your different reports and making sure that you are giving efficient feedback.
The best delegative relationships don’t only save you time — they allow you to come up with better solutions to problems.
I’ve found that one on ones are particularly useful. I think it’s very important to schedule these weekly — I have meetings with all of my direct reports scheduled at least weekly. It’s important to make sure that you continue to keep abreast of what’s occurring in your business; after all, just because you’re delegating does not mean you’ve forfeited all responsibility. It is likely that you will still have to strategise with your staff, and I’ve found that the best delegative relationships don’t only save you time — they allow you to come up with better solutions to problems. Two heads are better than one, and you should build a rapport with your reports that allows this.
It’s especially important to go through with weekly one on ones, even when there’s not anything pressing to discuss. There is a theory that, in a healthy romantic relationships, there are four positive interactions to every one negative one. I believe that this ratio holds true for healthy professional relationships as well. If you only contact people when there are crises, or when you need to correct their work, you will almost inevitably develop a negative impression with them. So schedule your sync-ups, and try to follow through with them every week!
In short, make sure you’re informed! Keep up to date, give feedback and correct where necessary, but ensure that you’re building a positive relationship where you do not micromanage, but where you also give your input as needed.
Delegation is an amazing skill. Out of all abilities, skillful delegation is probably the one that is most correlated to success. Bill Gates once said that coding was the closest thing to a superpower. I disagree. Training, empowering, and trusting subordinates with mission-critical goals is the superpower. Delegation is what the world’s biggest businesses — what the world’s biggest organisations — are built on. Learn this skill, and perhaps one day, you too, can be as successful as Elon Musk.
