Jerry Saki

Elon Musk sent every Tesla employee a memo that took authority away from their managers and handed it to them. He never asks for more hours. Every rule moves a decision closer to the person doing the work. Musk: “Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time.” Companies have a role for everyone who creates process and no role for anyone who removes it. Meetings and approval chains survive because removing them was never anyone’s job. Musk: “Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding value.” Attendance has always been treated as proof of commitment. He made it worthless, and contribution became the only thing that counts in the room. Musk: “It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time.” Ordinary manners protect whoever called the meeting. He moved that protection to everyone else sitting quietly with real work waiting on them. Musk: “Don’t use acronyms or nonsense words for objects, software, or processes at Tesla. Anything that requires an explanation inhibits communication.” Internal vocabulary converts knowledge into status and charges every newcomer a fee to participate. A company that speaks plainly can absorb talent at full speed. Musk: “Communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done, not through the chain of command.” Most good ideas die in transit, three levels below anyone with the power to act on them. Musk: “Any manager who attempts to enforce chain of command communication will soon find themselves working elsewhere.” The only threat in the entire memo. A manager who insists on being routed through is buying his own relevance with everyone else’s time. Musk put a price on it. Musk: “Always pick common sense as your guide. If following a company rule is obviously ridiculous in a particular situation, the rule should change.” Following a bad rule normally shields you. Exercising judgment exposes you. He flipped which one carries the risk, and every rule now has to earn its place against the person applying it. Every institution drifts toward protecting its own comfort. The ones that keep building are held together by people who rewrite the rules back down to something a single person can act on. Nothing on that list requires a budget, a headcount, or a title. You can run the entire memo from wherever you are sitting right now. Most people never test it and never learn it was permitted the whole time.

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