How Elon Musk is so effective:

Operating philosophy

• Relentlessly focused on weekly progress
• The Elon method boiled all the way down is “what have you gotten done this week?'"
• Rejects traditional corporate timelines and long-term planning over months and years

Engineering-first approach

• Works predominantly with engineers
• Personally understands all technical systems
• Avoids non-engineering meetings/conversations when possible, joins all the core engineering focused meetings
• Skips management layers completely
• Talks directly to person in charge of specific project
• He's in there with 24-year-old engineers and they'll just walk through fire for him
• Engineers deeply respect his technical knowledge

Weekly problem-solving method

• Identifies key bottleneck at each company weekly
• Works directly with engineers to fix it that same week
• Maintains this pace across multiple companies simultaneously
• Late night work sessions are normal

Rapid iteration

• Embraces public failure as learning opportunity
• SpaceX:
• Ran through five rocket generations of which four would fail but he would learn so much that the fifth one would work
• Would go through the five generations faster than his rocket competitors could do one generation
• Doesn't let public perception slow progress
• Willing to have rockets explode in testing

First principles thinking

• Gets to fundamental reality quickly
• Eliminates unnecessary processes
• Focuses purely on substance
• Rejects traditional corporate structure
• No Powerpoint presentations
• Minimal documentation

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