Transcription
How is Elon so productive? I've been working with him quite closely for the last couple of years, starting with the X acquisition. We've also invested in XAI and in SpaceX, so we now work on three companies together to different degrees.
Now that the government stuff is involved, he has an operating method that he's developed, which I would say is very unusual by modern standards. Actually, I'm not aware of another current CEO who operates the way that he does. I think probably the single biggest question in all of business right now is: why don't more CEOs operate the way that he does?
If you go back in history, you find characters more like him, especially the industrialists of the late 1800s and early 1900s. People like Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, or Thomas Watson, who built IBM. If you go back and read the biographies of people like that, those guys ran very similarly to the way that Elon runs things.
The top-line thing is just this incredible devotion from the leader of the company to fully and deeply understand what the company does. He is completely knowledgeable about every aspect of it and is in the trenches, talking directly to the people who do the work, being the lead problem solver in the organization.
Basically, what Elon does is he shows up every week at each of his companies. He identifies the biggest problem that the company is having that week and he fixes it. He does that every week for 52 weeks in a row. By the end of the year, each of his companies has solved the 52 biggest problems that year.
Most other large companies are still having the planning meeting for the pre-planning meeting for the board meeting, for the presentation, for the compliance review, and the legal review. It's this level of both incredible intellectual capability coupled with incredible force of personality and moral authority. It's just really amazing to watch.