What Elon Musk Can Teach Us About How to Get Projects Done

Elon Musk has had lots of success over the years and there lots he can teach us about how to do projects better. In this we will look at some of the principles that Elon Musk uses to get stuff done. After a brief introduction on who Elon Musk is the article will cover 6 Elon Musk does to get stuff done.

By copying all or some of these things you will increase your chance of being successful and get stuff done. Even if you adopt some of the smaller changes on your projects you will see an increase in project success.

South African born Elon Musk is the renowned entrepreneur and innovator. He has been behind many companies such as PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity.

SpaceX became the first private company to deliver cargo to the Space Station. It has also picked up billions of dollars of orders from NASA and others. The SpaceX landing of a spacecraft, back on earth, is the first of it’s kind. One of the reasons was the ‘reusable’ aspect which has reduced the cost of space travel. This lower cost could make it more viable to travel to Mars. It also makes it possible to travel to other parts of the Earth in a much shorter timeframe.

Musk encourages employees to buck the traditional chain of command. In most messages always flow through managers.

Managers should work hard to ensure that they are not creating silos within the company. Silos create vs. them mentality or impede communication.

If there is a blockage in the team, this is what happens:

Elon Musk to Tesla employees: NEVER discount a car! Tesla CEO Elon Musk found out his sales team has been offering discounts on cars and he was furious. He sent them an email which he later made public on Twitter. “There can never — and I mean never — be a discount on a new car coming out of the factory in pristine condition,” Musk wrote. “This is why I always pay full price when I buy a car and the same applies to my family friends, celebrities, no matter how famous or influential.”

“With first principles, you boil things down to the most fundamental truths … and then reason up from there.”

To Musk, prior experiences should not be the basis for making decisions. He encourages thinking based on “first principles”. This is boiling a situation down to its basic, fundamental truth. Then reasoning up from this basic position.

Talk to you need to. On your project, if you need to speak to someone to get something done go and speak to them. There is no need for project teams to communicate the project manager. Yes, they should keep the project manager informed so they know what is going on. They should not ask the project manager to ask someone else a question. Allow and encourage your project teams to communicate with they need to. This way they can get stuff done.

Hire project team members who are smarter than you and can get stuff done. If they are not happy being part of the project find somebody who is. The project manager should focus on project management not project doing. Projects bring about change so challenge the status quo. Do not allow people to slow the project down with statements such as “This is the way we have always done it”. Also, understand the fundamentals of the project. What is the project trying to achieve at a very basic level? Make sure for example that the project scope is easy to understand.

A common complaint from project managers is the negotiation of their plans to come in faster. As a project manager, you should stand your ground and use risk as your guide. If an aggressive timetable puts the project at risk then you need to stand up for your project. They may not like you in the short term but in the long term, they will thank you later on.

As the project manager, you will have the big picture which the project team will not have. It is part of your role to inspire and motivate the project team to hit the project goals. By communicating the vision and the benefit of the project it will help to motivate the team.

Projects can become very complicated and lose their way. A great way to keep projects on track is to do what Elon Musk does and focus on first principles. Once you understand the basics of what you are doing build from there. As a project manager, a great way to show the first principles is in the project plan. Regardless of what level of the project plan you look at it should be easy to understand what is being done. You should not have to see the subtasks below to understand what is being done.

All project meetings should be a very high standard. There should be a purpose for the meeting. Meetings should not take place because you always have one every week. All meetings should at the very least have an agenda. There should be a record of all the actions and decisions made in the meeting. All project team members should prepare for every meeting. This is so they can contribute and make the most of the time together. Needing to go find out and then come back together for another meeting could delay the project.

Related posts:

Companion Diagnostics Market was valued at USD 4.18 billion in 2021 and it is expected to reach a value of USD 15.13 billion by 2028, at a CAGR of 12.90% over the forecast period (2022–2028). The…

What is HD derivation path?. The HD derivation path is a string that makes it easy to handle multiple crypto currencies (assuming they all use the same signature….

Creating a Simple Genetic Algorithm (SGA) in python can be a good way to start learning the basic concepts of optimization problems and how Artificial Intelligence (AI) works behind the scenes. In…