Elon Musk’s leadership style
And you don’t have to be a prick
Andrej’s revelation
Andrej Karpathy, founding member of OpenAI and former Sr. Director of AI at Tesla, speaks with Stephanie Zhan at a recent Sequoia Capital’s AI Ascent event about what it’s like to work with Elon Musk.
Original video link on YouTube.
Andrej Karpathy describes Elon Musk’s management style as very unique and different from what you see at most companies. Here are the key points and I will delve into each in more detail.
- Small, Strong Teams
- Performance Matters
- Focus and Intensity
- Direct Communication
- Removing Bottlenecks
Small, Strong Teams
Musk prefers small teams with strong technical skills. He actively resists growing the team size and pushes back on hiring new people. Small yet highly competent and motivated teams typically produce much better results than much larger teams because:
- More creative, scrapy and hustle; less resource (both in terms of people and money) forces you do be all of above
- Less communication overhead within the team to keep everyone on the same page and to collaborate closely
- Less or no need for middle management, who often act as “gatekeepers” and “information filters”.
- Runs faster
Performance Matters
Most silicon valley companies “pamper” their employees, while Elon Musk tends to “push hard” on employees to do their best or else. Low performers are quickly removed from the team. Karpathy says he had to fight to keep some people on the team.
Almost all companies lipservice “performance”, but to pull it off the Elon Musk way you have to master two important traits.
- Upfront and Honest: This is something you have to make sure the potential employee knows and buys in before onboarding. Thus they will know exactly what is in store for them and they should only decide to join if they can handle this kind of working culture.
- High Expectations and Work Ethic: Musk sets high expectations for himself and everyone around him. He expects long hours and a relentless pursuit of improvement. As a leader, you have to live what you preach and show a living example of your work ethics and dedication.
Focus and Intensity
There’s a strong focus on getting things done. Large meetings are discouraged and people are encouraged to walk out of unproductive meetings. The work environment is intense and fast-paced.
To some extent, there won’t be that much of a balance between work and life, which will dissuade a large portion of potential employees.
Direct Communication
Musk skips middle management and directly talks to engineers. He spends a significant amount of time talking to them and getting updates. The key message here is that the engineers on the frontline have the ground truth, and that should not be filtered, dressed up or sugar-coated by middle management. Otherwise leaders will lead with misinformation, or even drive blind.
You don’t have to sleep on the factory floor every day, but staying with your five direct report executives in a cozy executive dining room all week is a sure sign of missed information and missed opportunity. We need to delegate and empower people, but not at the expense of missing critical first-hand information.
Another relevant point is Data-Driven Decision Making: Despite his intuition and vision, Musk is known for valuing data and using it to inform decisions. And where to get high quality data? From direct communication with your best people regardless of their organizational hierarchy.
Removing Bottlenecks
Musk is very involved in removing bottlenecks that slow down progress. He readily applies pressure to fix problems and expedite solutions, such as calling Jensen Huang to get more NVidia GPUs. It is well understood that the leaders contribute more by helping their people to do the work than doing all the work by themselves.
A few more things
Some additional points about Elon Musk’s leadership style, which were not directly mentioned in Andrej’s talk, can be summarized here.
- Visionary and Inspirational: Musk is known for his big audacious goals and ability to inspire his teams to achieve them. He paints a vivid picture of the future and gets people excited about the potential impact of their work. One good example is his famous “The secret master plan for Tesla”, written almost ten years ago. It not only inspires investors, but also as a rallying point for all the Tesla employees even through some really tough times including a near bankruptcy.
- Embrace of Risk and Failure: Musk is not afraid to take risks and experiment, even if it means facing failure. He views failures as learning opportunities and encourages calculated risks. Many of us have watched the rapid successions of Starship test launches, which vividly illustrates Musk’s inclination to “fail often and fail early”. In the space industry, this is in stark contrast to NASA/Boeing’s SLS project which symbolizes the “move slow, play safe” modus operandi of the past.
- Flexibility and Adaptability: Musk is known for his ability to adapt to changing circumstances and pivot strategies when needed. He thrives in dynamic environments and encourages his teams to be flexible as well.
Conclusion
There is no denying that nobody can be Elon Musk, or want to be Elon Musk. The combination of his somewhat controversial personality with his leadership styles produced astonishingly global or even interplanetary impacts.
The good news is that when you peel back the personality part of Elon Musk, you can actually find quite a few gems of leadership and management styles we can all adopt in our work and life. But the key is to be honest in your conviction and consistent with your execution, and be persistent over the longer time horizon. And I wish you a fantastic journey in this leadership adventure!
