Ep 64. Ruthless Productivity Hacks for Your Business

Gib Irons shares six productivity tips from a 2018 email Elon Musk sent to Tesla employees. These practical principles can help business leaders streamline operations and eliminate time-wasting practices.

• Avoid large meetings unless they provide value to everyone attending
• Eliminate frequent meetings that aren't addressing truly urgent matters
• Leave meetings when you're not contributing - it's respectful of everyone's time
• Avoid technical jargon that requires explanation and inhibits clear communication
• Communicate directly instead of through hierarchical chains of command
• Follow common sense and logic rather than blindly adhering to company rules
• Apply the principle "be brief, be bright, and be gone" when interacting with colleagues

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Introduction
• 0:34 Avoid Large Meetings
• 1:12 No Frequent Meetings
• 1:29 Leave If Not Contributing
• 2:04 Speak Plainly, Communicate Directly
• 2:31 Common Sense Over Rules
• 3:17 Be Brief, Be Bright, Be Gone

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Go Big With Gibb podcast, where we talk to professionals, business owners and entrepreneurs about their big wins. Hey guys, and welcome to this episode of Go Big With Gibb. I'm Gibb Irons, your host. Welcome to the show today.

Speaker 1: 0:16

A few days ago, I read an email that Elon Musk sent to Tesla employees and in that he talks about six tips for increasing productivity. I found the email to be very insightful and I wanted to share it with you and share with you some of my insights. So here are the six tips. Number one, he says avoid large meetings. Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time. Please get out of all large meetings unless you're certain that they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case, keep them very short. I've always believed in this. I think you know getting my entire staff together. While it's kind of cool to have like a boardroom feel, I believe that a lot of the folks in the room are not actually participating in the discussion. Getting rid of large meetings is a way to increase productivity and I tend to agree with that. Number two no frequent meetings, he says. Also get rid of frequent meetings Unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency should drop rapidly once the urgent matter is resolved. So no large meetings, get rid of frequent meetings. Number three, he says leave a meeting if you're not contributing. Walk out of a meeting or drop a call as soon as it is obvious that you aren't adding value. It's not rude to leave. It is rude to make someone stay and waste their time. This, I thought, was really interesting, because I can't tell you how many Zoom calls I've been on since COVID and in-person meetings where I felt like I wasn't really bringing anything to the table. And, as the CEO of the company, if my presence is not required, I need to be doing other things and I need to be focused on my highest and best use.

Speaker 1: 2:00

The fourth thing that Elon talked about was don't use technical jargon. He basically says speak plainly. Anything that requires an explanation inhibits communication. We don't want people to have to memorize a glossary just to function at Tesla. And number five, he says communicate directly instead of through the hierarchy. His exact words were communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done, not through the chain of command. And the sixth rule is follow logic, not rules. In general, always pick common sense as your guide. If following a company rule is obviously ridiculous in a particular situation, then the rule should change.

Speaker 1: 2:40

My office has adopted these policies for several years and we really don't have any large meetings. We don't have frequent meetings. We keep everybody on task, working on what they can do to be as productive as possible, and, in a firm where a large portion of our income is based on billable hours, we want folks focused on billing hours. We don't want them sitting in administrative meetings that are simply wasting their time. Another catchphrase that I use with my employees is be brief, be bright and be gone.

Speaker 1: 3:11

If you're an employee and you're working in a company and you want to be successful, the best thing you can do is come to the table with great ideas, express them in a very brief manner and then go away. This will help to increase productivity. If you can remember those three tips, it was from 2018 when Elon wrote the message to all Tesla employees, and it's a great read, very interesting, and I hope you can apply some of these principles in your business. Thank you for joining us today. I look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you for listening to this episode of Go Big with Gibb. If you haven't already, go follow us on social media at Gibb Irons. We'll see you next time.