Elon Musk, while sometimes a controversial figure, is undoubtably one of the most remarkable and successful business leaders of our age.
Considering that he runs six major corporations with incredible attention to detail, is an impressive achievement in anyone’s book. That these corporations, are the size and scope that they are, takes it to another dimension completely.
Here are a few of Musk’s key approaches to running successful businesses:
Business Approach; Instead of the usual efforts made by most CEO’s that focus on Implementing ‘best practices’, conducting numerous meetings, reviewing reports and managing politics within the organisation he does this one thing – Solves the most pressing or largest problem facing each business every week.
Many modern business schools will teach that the focus should be on the processes and not the people or the product. That Process trumps product.
Musk provides a different perspective on this. He has shown that by personally getting involved in issues he is able to first of all focus people on solving issues rather than focusing on processes. This is critical in business today. Things tend to move at great speed and overlooking issues to simply tick process improvements off a tick list can often create downstream headaches that now require much greater attention and effort to correct.
By dealing with issues immediately as they happen you remove risk down the line and future proof projects and products.
Musk will even be on the floor in his manufacturing businesses and even sleep in the factory so he is there to experience first hand what is happening. He is on site and can move immediately to shape a corrective action when required.
If you can solve the biggest problem in your business every week you will have solved 52 major problems every year and this will in turn provide a better return on the human and financial capital deployed.
Business Lesson;
By focusing your efforts on solving the biggest problem your business is facing every week you are removing the obstructions that prevent effort from producing results, this releases others to optimise their efforts instead of constantly having to solve issues.
Approach;
Find the biggest headache or bottleneck every week and get consensus from staff that this is the one thing they need solved to improve output. Establish how this can be fixed or changed or avoided and implement it and measure the outcome – Move on to the next once done
Here is the previous Business School Article covering the Trait Theory of Leadership: Read This Now