Elon Musk on Meetings: Avoid, Shorten, or Walk Out
In a powerful letter to his employees he explained some tips for productivity.
The first three tips were about meetings.
Here they are:
1. “Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time. Please get [out] of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short.”
2. “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.”
3. “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.”
These strategies are key to achieving operational efficiency.
Saying “Is what I’m doing as useful as it could be?” (STVP Future Fest) is a smart way to keep yourself on point.
Compare Elon’s thinking with the culture of many other companies – where plenty of employees dread long meetings due to their irrelevance and drudgery – and it’s clear that Elon’s meetings methods are one of the many reasons he and his teams are winning.