The Impossible Speed of Elon Musk - Ex-Tesla President
Former Tesla president Jon McNeill tells The Knowledge Project how Elon Musk's focus on speed shaped Tesla's growth, and shares his frameworks for decisions, communication, simplifying processes and product feedback.
The gist
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When 10,000 Tesla test drivers went uncalled, McNeill paused new leads until reps followed up, then used a store leaderboard instead of commissions.
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Musk and McNeill ran Tesla on three-sentence emails stating the problem, proposed solution and next step, and Musk demanded bad news immediately.
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McNeill's decision process: define the end goal, list what must be true, estimate the investment, then compare options on an impact versus effort chart.
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His five-step algorithm: question requirements, delete process steps, optimize, speed up, automate last; he says it led to ETFs weighted by bill of materials.
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From mentor Scott Cook he learned Follow Me Home, where customers list three fixes and three wishes, then vote to reveal top priorities.
"We put a leaderboard up on every store, and the leaderboard was number of sales that month, and we drew a line almost arbitrarily in the middle of that chart, and people would do a lot to get above that line even though nobody explained what the line was for."
▶ Play at 15:52"Do you think we could try to run the organization on three-sentence emails? First sentence is here's my problem. Second sentence is here's what I think the solution is. Third sentence is here's my next step, and if I need resources or permission, ask in that sentence. And so w..."
▶ Play at 10:38"The last step of the decision process is literally creating that 2 by 2. What is the impact versus the effort of doing this? And then how does that stack up against the other stuff we have on our plate? And that last effort versus impact chart for me helps me figure out where ..."
▶ Play at 25:43"He describes this tool set to me that he uses called Follow Me Home... I remember Woody and his team ran this exercise, Scott's Follow Me Home exercise, with our driver team. And they came with these brilliant insights that led the product roadmap for Lyft for about a year... ..."
▶ Play at 1:29:14"There's a vertical mentor, which means somebody has been down the path ahead of you... Then there's horizontal mentors, which I found to be equally valuable, and those are peers that are going through the same stuff you are... So you need to have both in your life constantly i..."
▶ Play at 1:26:13What they recommend · 14 picks
Productivity
11 picks · Jon McNeill ·Jon's productivity →
"Do you think we could try to run the organization on three-sentence emails? First sentence is here's my problem. Second sentence is here's what I think the solution is. Third se..."
"We put a leaderboard up on every store, and the leaderboard was number of sales that month, and we drew a line almost arbitrarily in the middle of that chart, and people would d..."
"This came from Calvin McDonald, who was the CEO of Lululemon at the time. If I was hit by a bus tomorrow or if I was fired, what are the immediately obvious things that my succe..."
Books
3 picks · Jon McNeill ·Jon's books →
"Second book is if you want to live a life worth living, Stephen Covey's old book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People really impacted me."
"Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara. I think it applies to every business, almost applies to every aspect of life. If you make the person across from you feel hospitality a..."
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