In both cases however, the meat of the articles is the e-mail:
Subject: Communication Within Tesla
There are two schools of thought about how information should flow within companies. By far the most common way is chain of command, which means that you always flow communication through your manager. The problem with this approach is that, while it serves to enhance the power of the manager, it fails to serve the company.
Instead of a problem getting solved quickly, where a person in one dept talks to a person in another dept and makes the right thing happen, people are forced to talk to their manager who talks to their manager who talks to the manager in the other dept who talks to someone on his team. Then the info has to flow back the other way again. This is incredibly dumb. Any manager who allows this to happen, let alone encourages it, will soon find themselves working at another company. No kidding.
Anyone at Tesla can and should email/talk to anyone else according to what they think is the fastest way to solve a problem for the benefit of the whole company. You can talk to your manager's manager without his permission, you can talk directly to a VP in another dept, you can talk to me, you can talk to anyone without anyone else's permission. Moreover, you should consider yourself obligated to do so until the right thing happens. The point here is not random chitchat, but rather ensuring that we execute ultra-fast and well. We obviously cannot compete with the big car companies in size, so we must do so with intelligence and agility.
One final point is that managers should work hard to ensure that they are not creating silos within the company that create an us vs. them mentality or impede communication in any way. This is unfortunately a natural tendency and needs to be actively fought. How can it possibly help Tesla for depts to erect barriers between themselves or see their success as relative within the company instead of collective? We are all in the same boat. Always view yourself as working for the good of the company and never your dept.
It seems that unrestricted communication slows down companies more than it speeds them up. Maybe at Tesla they already have ways to manage interruptions. Elon specifically mentions email and managers. Email can be read at the receiver's schedule. The part of the job of the manager is to protect the workers from distraction. "Try to email the manager who can best solve the problem." != "Feel free to interrupt anyone at any time."
I've always used a signal processing analogy for management communication. "Managers are lossy, high trasport-delay, filters." Any time a manager is between two people trying to transer information, there will be delay, and there will be information dropped.
Now, sometimes, that is a huge benefit. Not everyone can know everything in any organization of reasonable size, so there is benefit to having someone summarize information from other areas that I need to be aware of, and communicate only the bits that are relevant to me. OTOH, there are times when the best way to accomplish a particular mission is to get the manager out of the communication path so that the people with the expertise can communicate directly, at full speed and full fidelity, and deliver a solution.
So to me the litmus test for a manager is: "Am I adding value by filtering this information?" If no, then get out of the signal path.
This sounds basically like the 'high responsibility' culture at Netflix. Unfortunately, I don't actually trust that Elon has good intuitions when it comes to management and this particular email is abstract without enough support such that I think he might have woken up another day and written the exact opposite just as convincingly.
You need an incredibly mature and 'sorted' workforce to make this work but then expectations determine behavior and Elon Musk is setting rules right from the top with clarity.
Its now up to everyone to step up to the new expectations with similar clarity and simplicity rather than use it for personal ego games or validation, political one upmanship and self righteousness.
This is unfortunately easier said than done since it seems to be a human weakness to make any group more than 2 political.
Watch how quickly your career comes to a standstill if you go around your manager trying to resolve issues or push your ideas forward. CEO's may state things like this but its usually just lip service.
I've seen one employee use our "whistle blower" hot line and he ended up being fired and then had the company use their considerable legal resources to mire his court claim until he ran out of money and his US visa expired. It was disgusting to see.
One of the problems with managers in big organizations is they tend to be people who started out at lower levels and got promoted because they are good at politics and making higher-ups think they are better at what they are doing than they really are.
And as such they are more interested in keeping those under them from explaining to those above them how they, the managers, are screwing up, than they are in really doing things right.
The company policy to speak to another department without managers approval seems great in theory. The problem with this approach is that managers will favor good ratings and promotions to those who take permission before speaking with other departments. How to avoid this situation ?. Are there any links to how tesla management is structured ?
[+] [-] js2|8 years ago|reply
https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/this-email-from-elon-musk-...
In both cases however, the meat of the articles is the e-mail:
Subject: Communication Within Tesla
There are two schools of thought about how information should flow within companies. By far the most common way is chain of command, which means that you always flow communication through your manager. The problem with this approach is that, while it serves to enhance the power of the manager, it fails to serve the company.
Instead of a problem getting solved quickly, where a person in one dept talks to a person in another dept and makes the right thing happen, people are forced to talk to their manager who talks to their manager who talks to the manager in the other dept who talks to someone on his team. Then the info has to flow back the other way again. This is incredibly dumb. Any manager who allows this to happen, let alone encourages it, will soon find themselves working at another company. No kidding.
Anyone at Tesla can and should email/talk to anyone else according to what they think is the fastest way to solve a problem for the benefit of the whole company. You can talk to your manager's manager without his permission, you can talk directly to a VP in another dept, you can talk to me, you can talk to anyone without anyone else's permission. Moreover, you should consider yourself obligated to do so until the right thing happens. The point here is not random chitchat, but rather ensuring that we execute ultra-fast and well. We obviously cannot compete with the big car companies in size, so we must do so with intelligence and agility.
One final point is that managers should work hard to ensure that they are not creating silos within the company that create an us vs. them mentality or impede communication in any way. This is unfortunately a natural tendency and needs to be actively fought. How can it possibly help Tesla for depts to erect barriers between themselves or see their success as relative within the company instead of collective? We are all in the same boat. Always view yourself as working for the good of the company and never your dept.
Thanks,
Elon
[+] [-] dpatru|8 years ago|reply
It seems that unrestricted communication slows down companies more than it speeds them up. Maybe at Tesla they already have ways to manage interruptions. Elon specifically mentions email and managers. Email can be read at the receiver's schedule. The part of the job of the manager is to protect the workers from distraction. "Try to email the manager who can best solve the problem." != "Feel free to interrupt anyone at any time."
[+] [-] sctb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PeachPlum|8 years ago|reply
The full philosophy can be seen in Dan Pontefract's "Flat Army"
http://www.danpontefract.com/the-book/
[+] [-] dbcurtis|8 years ago|reply
I've always used a signal processing analogy for management communication. "Managers are lossy, high trasport-delay, filters." Any time a manager is between two people trying to transer information, there will be delay, and there will be information dropped.
Now, sometimes, that is a huge benefit. Not everyone can know everything in any organization of reasonable size, so there is benefit to having someone summarize information from other areas that I need to be aware of, and communicate only the bits that are relevant to me. OTOH, there are times when the best way to accomplish a particular mission is to get the manager out of the communication path so that the people with the expertise can communicate directly, at full speed and full fidelity, and deliver a solution.
So to me the litmus test for a manager is: "Am I adding value by filtering this information?" If no, then get out of the signal path.
[+] [-] Aron|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw2016|8 years ago|reply
Its now up to everyone to step up to the new expectations with similar clarity and simplicity rather than use it for personal ego games or validation, political one upmanship and self righteousness.
This is unfortunately easier said than done since it seems to be a human weakness to make any group more than 2 political.
[+] [-] 1290cc|8 years ago|reply
I've seen one employee use our "whistle blower" hot line and he ended up being fired and then had the company use their considerable legal resources to mire his court claim until he ran out of money and his US visa expired. It was disgusting to see.
[+] [-] woodandsteel|8 years ago|reply
And as such they are more interested in keeping those under them from explaining to those above them how they, the managers, are screwing up, than they are in really doing things right.
[+] [-] smithsmith|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] westurner|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat
Check out Thomas L. Friedman (@tomfriedman): https://twitter.com/tomfriedman
[+] [-] perseusprime11|8 years ago|reply