With a sprawling empire spanning electrical autos, rockets, synthetic intelligence, and social media, Elon Musk has constructed a popularity as one in every of the most influential—and unconventional enterprise leaders of the fashionable period. And as SpaceX eyes a probably record-setting public providing, the billionaire’s path to probably turning into the world’s first trillionaire is as soon as once more fueling fascination with how he constructed his success.
However few individuals have witnessed how Musk operates up shut fairly like Jon McNeill.
As Tesla’s president from 2015 to 2018, he labored alongside Musk throughout one in every of the firm’s most pivotal stretches, serving to oversee the rollout of the Mannequin X and the turbulent manufacturing ramp-up of the Mannequin 3—a interval when Tesla got here perilously shut to chapter.
Nevertheless, the success of Musk, and subsequently Tesla, wasn’t essentially pushed by charisma, luck, and even uncooked intelligence alone, in accordance to McNeill. As a substitute, it got here from an obsessive willingness to problem assumptions.
“He’s a fairly uniquely-wired particular person, clearly,” McNeill instructed Fortune, reflecting on his former boss. “He’s fascinated about stuff at a depth, continuously, and he frees up time in his day to take into consideration these large challenges, after which figures out a manner to go after them.”
Whereas Musk’s management model can usually seem chaotic from the exterior, McNeill mentioned there was a repeatable logic behind it. In his e-book, The Algorithm, he distilled Musk’s working philosophy right into a five-step framework:
- Query each requirement,
- Delete each potential step in the course of,
- Simplify and optimize,
- Speed up cycle time,
- Automate final.
The framework proved integral throughout Tesla’s progress years, McNeill recalled, serving to clear up manufacturing bottlenecks tied to the Mannequin X and scale the firm from roughly $2 billion in income to $20 billion.
And since leaving Tesla, McNeill has carried the philosophy all through the remainder of his profession—from serving as chief working officer at Lyft to becoming a member of the boards of Basic Motors and Lululemon, whereas additionally main his enterprise capital agency DVx Ventures.
“I really feel that The Algorithm is a framework that anyone can apply,” McNeill added. “You don’t have to be Elon Musk to do that.”
How Musk determines who’s match to work at his firms, in accordance to Tesla’s former president
For all of Elon Musk’s outsized affect, the billionaire’s firms are designed to thrive even when he isn’t in the room.
Throughout McNeill’s time at Tesla, Musk was juggling a number of ventures, which means Tuesday was usually the only day totally devoted to the electrical car maker. The remainder of the week, the firm relied on groups empowered to transfer rapidly and clear up issues on their very own.
In accordance to McNeill’s e-book, a lot of the genius in Musk’s firms was due to his good staff utilizing the five-step course of, which enabled them to query all the things and innovate—all with out Musk.
Nonetheless, not everyone seems to be minimize out to work inside Musk’s high-pressure ecosystem.
“He demands to only work with world-class expertise,” McNeill instructed Fortune, describing the kind of staff Musk values as “10Xers”—individuals who, when handed a problem, usually ship 10 instances the output of a mean employee.
“We made a lot ahead progress as a result of the capabilities of our individuals had been so excessive,” McNeill added. ”It was like asking a military of utterly particular horses, and also you requested them to go see these targets, they usually simply do it. After which come again hungry for extra.”
The workers who thrived most underneath Musk tended to share an uncommon combine of 4 traits: humility, functionality, confidence, and curiosity, in accordance to McNeill.
Confronted with one in every of Musk’s seemingly unimaginable mandates, these robust staff not often pretended to already know the resolution. As a substitute, McNeill mentioned, their intuition was usually: I don’t understand how to try this. What separated them was what got here subsequent:
“‘Problem accepted, we’ll determine it out.’”
Past Tesla, executives agree the proper angle could make a world of distinction
The framework for figuring out prime performers at Tesla echoed a message more and more shared by different executives: uncooked expertise issues, however mindset might matter much more.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, for instance, has argued that angle can have an outsized affect on long-term profession success—significantly for younger individuals simply starting their skilled lives.
“An embarrassing quantity of how nicely you do, significantly in your twenties, has to do with angle,” Jassy mentioned in a dialog with LinkedIn in 2024.
For former Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach, the significance of angle stems from classes learned nicely earlier than the C-suite, starting throughout his time as a aggressive wrestler.
“The angle that you just convey to the workplace—and to your staff, your friends, and the individuals you serve alongside every single day—is what finally will decide quite a lot of your success,” Eschenbach mentioned on McKinsey’s Inside the Technique Room podcast final yr.
“I usually say your altitude in life is totally decided by your angle in life.”
The message extends nicely past Silicon Valley. Kurt Alexander, president of Omni Lodges & Resorts, beforehand instructed Fortune that one in every of the most vital traits he appears to be like for in job candidates is a willingness to work laborious and serve others.
“We will train you the hospitality enterprise,” he mentioned. “However do you might have an angle and a willingness to serve individuals? As a result of that’s the enterprise we’re in, and it’s laborious work, and it’s not horny in lots of respects, but it surely’s good work and there’s quite a lot of dignity in it.”
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