Elon Musk's brilliant email rule at Tesla

[Darth Nubian]

Yes, all ideas are not credible. But won't the person to whom the idea is relevant be able to filter credible ideas out from non-credible ideas much faster than the chain-of-command would?





There's far less of a bottleneck this way, because the total # of emails becomes much fewer.

Yes, chain of command filters out emails, but it also intensely multiplies the total number of emails. You could easily end up doubling or tripling the total number of emails moving through the system because it has to pass through the whole chain of command.

The only reason it would ever be a good idea for "chain of command" to spend their time filtering through emails in a process that actually creates many MORE emails is if you don't value the time of your chain of command at all.

If everyone in your company is doing a worthwhile, important job, then company efficiency is maximized by minimizing the total number of emails - which is done by the most direct communication possible.

Sure, maybe that means one particular person (like Musk) will have to field many more emails. But that's easily solved by hiring someone whose job is specifically to filter them for you, if needed. Since they work at your direction they will do a much better, more efficient job of filtering than the chain of command would, and would keep a lot of people who have better things to do from wasting their time.

What you are describing is an organizational hierarchy or "chain of command"

 

[Professor Emeritus]

What you are describing is an organizational hierarchy or "chain of command"

No, I'm describing a personal email secretary for Elon Musk.

Did you misread my comment?

 

[Darth Nubian]

No, I'm describing a personal email secretary for Elon Musk.

Did you misread my comment?

That same rationale is how a chain of command comes into existence. What happens when Elon's CFO and COO decide that it would be more efficient to delegate the more mundane parts of their job? Today its emails, next week its performance evaluations, so on and so forth.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

That same rationale is how a chain of command comes into existence. What happens when Elon's CFO and COO decide that it would be more efficient to delegate the more mundane parts of their job? Today its emails, next week its performance evaluations, so on and so forth.

No, because none of that is, "You have to go through your own manager if you want to ask a question to any other department in the company, who may even have to go through his superiors in order to instigate something outside his department, and anyone else has to go through your manager if they want to ask a question to you."

The typical chain of command means that there can be multiple middleman steps in any mediation between different departments. I've been in an organization that had to reiterate company-wide policy due to people emailing outside their chain of command. There were 12 people under me who couldn't speak at anyone at the home office AT ALL without going through me first.

While in Musk's scenario, at the absolute worst you have an additional 1 person who deals with the email, that is someone who specifically is chosen to deal with that job, and even that "at worst" scenario would only be true for a couple people who have especially outsized email volume. (Which obviously could only be a tiny % of the company, otherwise they already would have been fukked under the old system.) For most of communication, outside Musk and maybe a couple others at most, it's going to be truly direct.

 

[Darth Nubian]

No, because none of that is, "You have to go through your own manager if you want to ask a question to any other department in the company, who may even have to go through his superiors in order to instigate something outside his department, and anyone else has to go through your manager if they want to ask a question to you."

The typical chain of command means that there can be multiple middleman steps in any mediation between different departments. I've been in an organization that had to reiterate company-wide policy due to people emailing outside their chain of command. There were 12 people under me who couldn't speak at anyone at the home office AT ALL without going through me first.

While in Musk's scenario, at the absolute worst you have an additional 1 person who deals with the email, that is someone who specifically is chosen to deal with that job, and even that "at worst" scenario would only be true for a couple people who have especially outsized email volume. (Which obviously could only be a tiny % of the company, otherwise they already would have been fukked under the old system.) For most of communication, outside Musk and maybe a couple others at most, it's going to be truly direct.

We just have different visions for how this idea is going to work out. I already have to address the concerns of employees under me and having to address employees from other departments is frankly a waste. Every organization is different, but in my experience this will introduce inefficiency especially if you work somewhere with a higher turnover rate.

 

[Isaiah Bradley]

There's far less of a bottleneck this way, because the total # of emails becomes much fewer.

Yes, chain of command filters out emails, but it also intensely multiplies the total number of emails. You could easily end up doubling or tripling the total number of emails moving through the system because it has to pass through the whole chain of command.

The only reason it would ever be a good idea for "chain of command" to spend their time filtering through emails in a process that actually creates many MORE emails is if you don't value the time of your chain of command at all.

If everyone in your company is doing a worthwhile, important job, then company efficiency is maximized by minimizing the total number of emails - which is done by the most direct communication possible.

Sure, maybe that means one particular person (like Musk) will have to field many more emails. But that's easily solved by hiring someone whose job is specifically to filter them for you, if needed. Since they work at your direction they will do a much better, more efficient job of filtering than the chain of command would, and would keep a lot of people who have better things to do from wasting their time.

bro if you're HR director and instead of having a staff that handles frequent emails about intern request, health benefits, open jobs, 401K, and complaints, all those emails are instead funneled into your email, that's more emails and more unnecessary information that you have to read, process and answer

Maybe Musks meant only send new idea based emails so to minimize the number of emails he will receive, I don't know. But allowing everyone from the intern to the VP have access to you becomes overwhelming

Fawk Steve Harvey, but I understood why someone in his position needs to minimize who could approach him and when

 

[Lifer11]

I dont see how this is a brilliant idea. It's just opening up communication for everyone in the company, which is a good idea, but hardly groundbreaking or brilliant.

 

[Geek Nasty]

The unwarranted dikk riding this guy gets. And working 100 hours a Week? I need receipts and video.

 

[Saucay]

This sounds good and I would love to work in an environment which promotes this kind of communication approach but in reality, it can lead to confusion and chaos. Maybe a few adjustments here and there can make it work.

 

[joeychizzle]

This would never ever happen at an Asian company.

 

[newarkhiphop]

This sounds good and I would love to work in an environment which promotes this kind of communication approach but in reality, it can lead to confusion and chaos. Maybe a few adjustments here and there can make it work.

Imo it would work just fine people are so used to the old way of doing things

Floor employee >supervisor >manager >administration / vp > director / president

I've always hated that system and it creates a culture where many times you have lower level people being purposely stifled by middle management so they don't come off as smarter than them to higher ups

Takes away from creativity and bottle necks projects

I'm going through that right now with a out of state contractor on a software project which is very far behind because it suffers from a extreme version of this.

I had a talented individual who would be a asset to our team but in order to help us he would need to get clearance from his supervisor so I went pitched the idea got him cleared to work with us few days a week i then go and tell this to the chick coordinating our part of the project (via email) she says "thanks for doing that but I will handle this" goes and takes a full week to talk to the same exact people I did to get the same response I did.

 

[Saucay]

Imo it would work just fine people are so used to the old way of doing things

Floor employee >supervisor >manager >administration / vp > director / president

I've always hated that system and it creates a culture where many times you have lower level people being purposely stifled by middle management so they don't come off as smarter than them to higher ups

Takes away from creativity and bottle necks projects

I'm going through that right now with a out of state contractor on a software project which is very far behind because it suffers from a extreme version of this.

I had a talented individual who would be a asset to our team but in order to help us he would need to get clearance from his supervisor so I went pitched the idea got him cleared to work with us few days a week i then go and tell this to the chick coordinating our part of the project (via email) she says "thanks for doing that but I will handle this" goes and takes a full week to talk to the same exact people I did to get the same response I did.

I know exactly what you are talking about. I have been thinking about leaving the corporate 9-5 gig and go solo for about a year now, and shyt like this is one of the reasons I may jump ship soon.