Crl. Demonio

Elon Musk sent an email to all SpaceX and Tesla employees describing his rules for meetings. The email leaked. The rules explain why his companies move faster than anyone else's and why his employees are simultaneously the most productive and most exhausted people in any industry. Rule 1: No large meetings unless you are certain they provide value to the entire audience. If not, keep them small. Rule 2: Leave a meeting if you are not contributing. It is not rude to leave. It is rude to waste someone's time by staying. Rule 3: No frequent meetings unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency should drop once the urgent matter is resolved. Rule 4: No acronyms or nonsense words. Any acronym that needs explanation shouldn't exist. Rule 5: Communication should travel the shortest path necessary, not through the chain of command. A manager who insists all communication flows through them is a bottleneck that should be removed. The most radical rule is number 2. In every other company, leaving a meeting early is a career damaging act of disrespect. At SpaceX, staying in a meeting where you're not adding value is the career damaging act because it signals you don't understand time. The cultural inversion is intentional. Most companies incentivize presence. Elon incentivizes absence when absence is more productive than attendance. The email also included a line that has been quoted more than any other Elon statement about management: "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." The result: SpaceX and Tesla meetings last 5 to 15 minutes. Most corporate meetings last 30 to 60. The difference across thousands of employees across thousands of meetings per week is millions of recovered hours per year. Hours that go to building rather than talking about building. The man who builds faster than any CEO alive builds faster because his people spend less time in rooms talking about what they're going to build and more time actually building it. The email was a leaked memo. It should have been a textbook.