The NFX Podcast The Founders’ List: 10 Pieces of Manufacturing Advice from Tesla CEO, Elon Musk
This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community.
From the outside, it's hard to understand what's going on at Tesla. Here are 10 quick examples of advice centered around the Model 3 production bottleneck pulled from real internal emails sent by Tesla CEO, Elon Musk. Topics include:
- Always Start With The Good
- Challenge, Demand, But Always Offer Help
- Production only Moves as Fast as the Least Lucky
- Don’t Be 10% Better, Be 10x Better, Seriously
- Encourage Customers to Bring Out the Measuring Tape
- If Molehills Turn to Mountains, Follow the Money Train
- If You Can’t Explain it to A Five Year Old, You Don’t Understand it Well Enough
- It Must Be Ok For People To Talk Directly And Just Make The Right Thing Happen
- It Is Not Rude To Leave, It Is Rude To Make Someone Stay And Waste Their Time
- Hold Contractors to the Same Standards of Your Employees
"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.”