Elon Musk is one of those love-him or hate-him character. I am not a fan of his many egotistical antics but no one can dispute the success of Space X and Tesla, two companies that are synonymous with who he is (I won’t include Boring and SolarCity). This book gives an insightful look on Musk fro researches and interviews with those who love him and loathe him.
His attributes that define his leadership/management style according to this book are as follows:
1. Visionary, otherworldly aspiration: Has big meaningful goals that attract people to his causes. There is something to say for these rare breeds who can articulate a future paths that people flock towards. Musk is certainly in that rarified stratosphere of his own alongside Jobs, Gates and Bezos
2. Ability to accumulate talent mass: He’s able to attract the top talents with his charisma and vision and the companies’ autonomy. This unleashes a lot of innovation and allows a lot of progress to be made
3. High expectation. Abusive, unrealistic, demanding, insensitive expect every to dedicate themselves as much as he does. When he has the conviction realize his visions as quickly as possible, then other priorities (for him and his employees) don’t really matter
4. Micro-management/hands on: Given his obsessiveness nature, he want to be involved in all details. This is overbearing but what set him apart is his understanding of the topic at hand and insatiable desire to learn and total recall. This raises the quality of the decisions he made and the direction
5. Optimism and passion: The can-do attitude is infectious and colors a lot of what his ventures are about
6. Tenacity and drive: ‘No is not the answer’. Do or die but don’t give up
What is fascinating about Musk is that it is clear that there are many ways to lead a company to success. As a leader, he’s abrasive and puts people down unflinchingly but is very charismatic and garners so much loyalty from his employees. His world views are also a function of his upbringings and experiences which the book also explores. This came out in 2013 so doesn’t cover the latter years of his tenure (including the insane rise of Tesla’s stocks and his various Twitter incidents) If you want to understand more about this important but enigmatic figure of our generation, do check this out!
Extra: Goodreads
If you like this, you might be interested in this other book review: Warren Buffett