Elon Musk reportedly uses a brutal tactic to stop people wasting time in meetings

I think we can all agree that we hate to have our time wasted with unnecessary meetings.

But Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, has used his frustration to develop a strategy to keep things moving.

According to a former SpaceX employee as posted on Quora, Musk once called out an employee in a meeting. He wrote:

“One of my close friends started there a couple years before me. He worked (and still does) in an analysis group, so meetings made less sense when you could just walk over and ask someone a question. He told me a story one time (this is paraphrased):

“Elon to a meeting member: ‘You haven’t said anything. Why are you here?'”

The former employee then explained that Musk has a rationale for being so blunt.

“That may be borderline rude, but it makes sense,” he wrote. “Don’t be in a meeting unless there’s a purpose for it; either to make a decision, or get people up to speed. In most cases, an email will suffice.”

Many CEOs are similarly impatient with time wasting that comes from inefficient meetings. Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and CEO, reportedly employees a “two-pizza rule” to cut down on meeting bloat.

Bezos’ thinking is simple. Meetings should have few enough people that two pizzas would feed everyone. If not, the meeting will probably be unproductive.

Bezos also told Fortune that he begins some meetings with senior executives with silent reading time. This gives everyone a chance to get on the same page and mull over the issues before they start speaking. It means that Bezos has everyone’s attention from the beginning of the meeting.

HT: Business Insider

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