Elon Musk’s 3 Rules for Meetings, and How They Relate to Lean

I just saw a rather interesting article on Elon Musk’s rules for meetings on Business Insider.

1) No large meetings.

He said 4-6 people, if I recall correctly. More people than that and there is a lot of wasted time.

My supposition is that a lot of the work that is done in meetings can be done with quick conversations with the ‘bit players’–the people with only a minor skin in the game.

2) Leave if you aren’t adding value.

This is a tough one because it seems rude. But if you find yourself in a meeting and you can see that it doesn’t affect you or need you, get up and leave.

It needs a cultural change to do this though. The idea is that you have to re-frame it to think that it is more rude to waste a person’s time than it is to leave a meeting.

3) No frequent meetings.

Some projects get meetings on the calendar, and then there is little progress. Meetings then become a waste of time. Have meetings only as often as you need them.

My Rule

I have my own rule. Make an agenda and then schedule to that agenda. If your meeting will only take 17 minutes, schedule it from 10:00 to 10:17. It shows you put some thought into it and aren’t wasting people’s time.

Lean Thoughts

In general, even in Lean companies, we don’t run Lean meetings. There is little precise planning and very little feedback when things don’t go as planned.

Now, the argument I frequently face when proposing ideas like this is that people aren’t robots, and that you can’t manage them in the same way as you do manufacturing processes.

Yes. This is true. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t manage them at all.

Focus on the basics. Track how often the meeting starts on time and log the reasons why people are late. Sometimes, the simple act of tracking things will change behavior.

In other cases, you’ll uncover other reasons. Maybe people get lost on the way to a hidden conference room. Maybe the meeting is scheduled for near the meeting planner rather than in a central location. Maybe there are certain times that people are late more often—perhaps Monday mornings—and should be avoided.

The point is that we can strip out a lot of processes from what tends to be creative work and reduce problems.

What Musk’s rules do is force people to think more about how they are spending their resources, and make better use of them as a result.