I know many people do not like Elon Musk. I know many people won’t like this article. But today, my Procurement Legends, we’re going to talk about whether or not we should be a little more like Elon when it comes to our working day.
Elon is a no-nonsense kind of guy.
We know this.
But his focus on eeking out every single second of the day has to be admired…even if you think it’s wrong to work at 100 miles per hour every second of the day that is committed to work time.
And yes, I’ve failed to acknowledge the “rudeness” of Musk, but my POV is that those who want to work in a hardcore environment choose to do so, and there are plenty of more “chill” roles in the world.
But here are the rules that Elon sets out within his companies:
No large meetings unless they provide value to the whole audience.
Get rid of frequent meetings unless dealing with an extremely urgent matter.
Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding value.
Avoid using acronyms or nonsense words for objects, software, or processes.
Ignore the chain of command, communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done.
Always use common sense as your guide. If following a company rule is obviously ridiculous in a particular situation, the rule should change
I’m always going to be 100% honest with you. I love these, but I dislike one of them. Any guesses as to which one I hate?
More on that soon.
But let’s go through these rules and see how we could utilise them in Procurement.
Rule 1: No Large Meetings
Elon Musk says, “Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time. Please get off all large meetings unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience.”
This has always been my view of large meetings. You typically have a handful of people. Often, the same people. Whose voice carries the loudest, and who dominates these kinds of meetings? You know full well they’ve already discussed the state of play beforehand.
In these meetings, in my early days in Government, I used to ask the hardest and most direct questions to cut through this. Of course, having a graduate talk up in this way didn’t win me friends. I was okay with that. I wasn’t looking for friends in that role. But I was trying to make the meeting worthwhile. I’d talk to people before these meetings, which might be focused on strategy, ways of working, relationships, or a big new project, and figure out the concerns. I soon realised many people wouldn’t talk up.
There was a lack of confidence.
A resignation to the fact that this was just a paycheck to them.
There was no passion for procurement and contract management - I’ve got more to come on this real soon.
But I had passion. And their concerns were valid.
But what I realised was that these large meetings were often a theatrical performance.
It is more akin to an exercise.
I began to lament them.
So, I truly see excessive and large meetings as a blight that worsens over time. We should absolutely look to bring more asynchronous communication to these kinds of meetings. A loom or zoom recording, with a Q&A thread that enables company-wide communication or team-wide communication in a public forum, feels much better.
Just imagine if your procurement team had “less team” meetings and all the information that needs to be conveyed to them was done asynchronously. Your team now knows the expectations, can speak to you 1-2-1 on the issues they have with it, and can focus on the tasks at hand.
Some of the meetings I used to sit in were 1 to 3 hours long. I had all-day “sessions” at times. These were horrendous.
Rule 2: Get rid of frequent meetings
Musk says, “Get rid of frequent meetings unless you’re dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency should drop rapidly once the urgent matter is resolved.”
So the idea is that you should only set frequent meetings for a specific matter and once that matter is closed off, you drop the recurring meeting.
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