In February of this year, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy rocket and launched the Roadster sports car into space, attracting global attention again. Executive Elon Musk is a manager of many innovative enterprises. How did he spend his day? What are his habits that enable him to maintain high efficiency in the busy hours of daily work, and to keep all employees in the driving force?
This paper focuses on four points: 1., concentrate on important matters and solve practical problems. 2., breaking the problem of casserole and not being limited by past experience, leading SpaceX to create the world's first rocket from scratch. 3. good communication begins with a written email. 4., if the full score is 100 points, the target will be set at 120 points. Not to be able to stay ahead of the current situation.
Innovation: setting high standards, not being limited by experience, and treating every problem as a first meeting.
1., concentrate on important matters and solve practical problems.
For Musk, who is also a decision-maker of many companies, the most important work of every day is to reply to a pile of e-mails waiting to be posted. If you don't remove the stones blocking the way for employees at the very beginning, you may miss a fleeting opportunity in a second.
At seven o'clock in the morning, Musk will spend half an hour to reply to the mail, then continue its own day's journey. In the Musk calendar, a small task of five minutes is filled; a time limit is set by the principle of a tomato bell work method, which helps the brain focus on truly important messages, filter meaningless messages, and focus on achieving the goal of the day.
In addition, it is an effective way to temporarily switch off the message of the action device, replacing unnecessary lengthy meetings with email, and trying the far end.
Musk must constantly review his way of using time and keep thinking about how to do better and better in the same time.
Whether SpaceX rocket or Tesla electric vehicle, there is no experience from predecessors for reference. Therefore, encountering all kinds of trouble in the process of production is a common occurrence. This situation also affects Musk's time distribution, and he spends 80% of his time breaking through the bottlenecks of production: "I spend most of my time solving practical problems in engineering and manufacturing, rather than waiting for the original planning vision and talking on paper." "
Because of the way in the pursuit of a dream, "dream" than the "dream" is more important.
2., breaking the problem of casserole and not being limited by past experience, leading SpaceX to build the world's first rocket from scratch.
In 2002, in order to realize the dream of sending humans to Mars, Musk began to visit the world's space equipment manufacturers, looking for possible partners. But after walking around the globe, he was surprised to find that a rocket cost as high as 65 million dollars.
Illustration: Falcon 9 rocket launches
To understand that dreams were so expensive, Musk wanted to simply come himself. But do you really do it? Although the experience of previous technology and navigation too completely unrelated, but he began to answer, while collecting information:
"What is the rocket made of?" "
"Aerospace grade aluminum alloy, plus some titanium, copper, carbon fiber and so on. "
"Why are these materials so expensive? "
The manufacturing process has increased many invisible costs through many processing and transportation. "
"Will it be cheaper if we purchase raw materials from the upstream and process it ourselves? "
After a rough calculation, the material cost accounts for only 2% of the whole rocket. He decided to abandon the purchase of ready made rockets, and set up SpaceX to start the dream of Mars. A few years later, SpaceX successfully reduced the cost of manufacturing rockets by ten times.
The foregoing thinking process is applied to Musk's "first theorem" which has been mentioned in many occasions. It is also a secret weapon he used to cope with complex challenges.
In simple terms, the "first theorem" is to dismantle complex problems until the size of the existing knowledge can be solved, and finally the solution is summed up.
Musk once said that we should regard every problem as the first encounter and start from the beginning. Owing to excessive reliance on past experience, it is easy to form "subjective ears" subjective judgement and ignore objective facts, and get into the "expert blind spot", resulting in erroneous results. Reference to past experience can help us avoid making the same mistake, but not guarantee that we can succeed again.
To apply the first theorem well, the prerequisite is to have a large knowledge base, which depends on multiple learning.
When Musk was young, he read two books every day. His huge reading allowed him to build cross-border knowledge across science, engineering and management. Imagine every field as a tree, starting from the basic theory (Shu Gen, the trunk), and then expanding the scope of details and applications.
Another effective way of learning is to find experts and ask questions. Kevin Brogan, a senior employee of SpaceX, recalled Musk's "enthusiastic" learning attitude: "at the beginning, I thought Musk was wondering if I really understood these technologies. But then I found that he kept throwing out a series of questions to learn from you until he had mastered 90% things that you knew. "
- good communication begins with a written email
Communication with e-mail is the proudest skill of Musk. He uses e-mail to communicate internally, share the vision and goals of the company's future, and urge employees to improve their productivity.
The purpose of frequent emails and employees to share future goals is to increase motivation: "if people do understand their goals and the importance of achieving their goals, they will do better and enjoy it." "
Relatively speaking, Musk can also be directly shown by bad habits. In SpaceX, there was a phenomenon of abbreviations, so Musk wrote this "unexplained abbreviation" to all employees. The content clearly explained why the unidentified abbreviations would cause other people's troubles, the announcement of no reuse of unapproved vocabulary, and the scope of application.
So, how do you write a good mail?
As short as possible, reduce confused words, such as "I feel..." "," possible... In order to avoid misunderstanding, if the content is more, focus on the first line, and name names and to-do items in bold. In addition, if you want to send e-mail, remember to put forward the key list in the beginning of the letter, do not write a "FYR (for your reference)" just send the letter out.
4., if the full score is 100 points, the target will be set at 120 points. Dissatisfied with the current situation in order to keep the lead
In the eyes of employees, the most notorious "Musk" is the habit of setting goals and deadlines seem impossible for each project.
On this point, the former SpaceX manager has a vivid metaphor: "Musk wants to make an oil saving car, and a barrel of oil can run across the United States from Losangeles to New York (4500 kilometers)." After a year of hard work, we can not achieve this crazy goal within the deadline, but we all feel that the car to run to Las Vegas (434 kilometers) should be no problem. But unexpectedly, we finally arrived at the New Mexico Road (1411 km)! "
In fact, the famous Roadster of Tesla electric sports car was originally expected to be launched in 2006, but it had not been released until 2008. Though it is 2 years later than expected, Roadster is still the world's first pure electric sports car.
The reason why Musk set up high standards for teams is to force them out of comfort zone. If we just repeat what we are familiar with day after day, we will only make the team stagnate. About time limit, he thinks so: "usually, what I say will come true, maybe not always on time, but it will always come true. "
In 2004, Musk asked the supplier about the price of a rocket part, and the manufacturer gave a price of 120 thousand dollars.
Musk again gave the power of the first theorem, dismantling all the parts, and asked the Engineer in charge of the project, Steve Davis to make the same thing with a budget of $5000. 9 months later, Davis spent only 3900 dollars to get the important parts on the Falcon 1 rocket.
In the era of high-speed change, we can never be satisfied with the current situation, because opponents will not stop looking for a better, faster and cheaper way to achieve goals. We must persist in trying, failing, correcting, learning from failure until we find the right way. As Musk said, "though I don't yet know how to succeed, I know how to fail. "
