Effective Meetings

Elon Musk's Six Rules for Tesla Employees

Published: Thursday, Dec 8, 2022 Last modified: Monday, Apr 8, 2024

My rules

Standups with a sense of urgency, i.e. not take 30 minutes!

When editing the weekly minutes use the shortcut @meeting notes building block in Google Docs.

Please have an Agenda which includes:

For fast collaboration consider huddling with Slack

Elon’s rules

  1. Avoid large meetings
  2. Leave a meeting if you’re not contributing
  3. Forget the chain of command
  4. Be clear, not clever
  5. Ditch frequent meetings
  6. Use common sense

Elon reportedly send this mail to Tesla employees:

1) Avoid large meetings
Large meetings waste valuable time & energy
- They discourage debate
- People are more guarded than open
- There’s not enough time for everyone to contribute
Don’t schedule large meetings unless ...

— Alex (@alex_avoigt) November 25, 2022

See also Elon Musk’s design process