Management by deadline

First of all, there is one thing you need to know about the US entrepreneur Elon Musk: He is an optimist by nature. More than that, he does not only base his time planning on the best-case scenario, he systematically underestimates the effort of the individual steps and pieces. Also, Musk expects all those involved to be just as competent and to get as much involved in the tasks as he is.

Musk is known for hardly sleeping and for pushing a 100-hour week if the project requires it. The entrepreneur, who is often called the real Tony Stark by the media, not only works many hours, he also strives for speed. And he does it everywhere. As one employee Ashlee Vance tells for his biography on Musk: “He even pees fast, like a fire hose — three seconds and done. He is truly and truly rushed.” Of course, such behavior is not without risks and problems, which I will write about later.

Partly for fun, but still with a spark of truth, the early team member of SpaceX Brogan describes how Musk estimates the time needed for projects: He simply takes the number of seconds it takes to just type in a line of source code and multiplies it by the estimated number of lines of code. That’s it for scheduling.

The media celebrates him as an innovator and head of companies with revolutionary products. His announcements are legendary, but rarely credible to industry insiders. But these public promises and announcements are the main driver for internal project management. The aggressive time planning is rather the consequence. True to the motto: “Well, now I promised, now we have to deliver.

Management by deadline

But now to Elon Musk’s method, which I would like to call Management by Deadline. After all, it has to be more than just optimism and hard work. At its heart is the very aggressive, perhaps even unrealistic time planning that springs from Musk’s optimism. Any engineer who resisted Musk’s Management by Deadline was fired pretty quickly. To survive, SpaceX employees had to quickly develop methods to meet the goals set by Musk. They learned to plan for the day — sometimes to the minute.

As a result, especially at the beginning of SpaceX, pseudo schedules were created that the managers knew Musk would like, but were impossible to keep. False hope at Musk as well as false promises to customers was the inevitable result. Gwynn Shotwell, President of SpaceX, called frequently to apologize to disgruntled customers for the inevitable delays. Besides, she then mentioned realistic deadlines.

Anyone can create an aggressive schedule. What makes Musks Management by Deadline effective is its way of getting the most out of the employees.

Ordinary managers simply set goals. They say, “You have to be done with this by 2 p.m. Friday!” Musk, on the other hand, says, “I need the impossible done by Friday at 2 pm. Can you do that?” The difference, Brogan says, is that employees commit themselves to achieve the goal. An intrinsic motivation sets in. They want to get the job done on time and they make a special effort.

The tough recruitment process at SpaceX

Another trick that Musk uses can be found in the rigorous selection process for new employees. Especially in the early days, SpaceX recruiters used academic papers to look for experts with highly specialized skills. Potential new employees who made it onto the shortlist received an invitation in a blank envelope, almost like an agent film. This was followed by a first personal meeting in a nearby restaurant or café.

In addition to engineers, managers and salespeople were also expected to work hard. Probably the worst are the programmers who have to solve hard tasks with 500 lines of code. Whoever makes it to the final round has to convince Musk in an essay. The question: Why do you want to work at SpaceX.

By focusing on individual performance and readiness, the team saves time for meetings and compromises. At least in the good sounding theory. Steve Davis, the 22nd employee at SpaceX and current head of the Future Projects department, who is said to have been working 16 hours a day for years and thus creates more than eleven people together, is mentioned as an example.

Problems and criticism of the method

The companies that Musk manages are very flexible and agile. There is rarely a real fixed plan. And this is exactly how innovative products can be conceived and manufactured in the first place. The Management by Deadline, which pushes Musk to the top like no other, certainly motivates the bright minds of the companies. And the almost crazy projects attract talents in the first place.

But just as well known as the brand’s Tesla and SpaceX is the inability of these companies to meet their deadlines and public promises. The press often criticized Musk for not meeting announced deadlines for product delivery. In the past, pressure often forced him in front of journalists’ cameras and microphones to publicly apologize for the delays.

He contradicts the accusation that he is too aggressive in his objectives. He would find impossible goals demotivating. However, Musk admits that in the past he was overly optimistic about the cost of projects. Especially in the early days of SpaceX, he overestimated himself by 200%, which was because he didn’t know yet what was needed to build rockets.

For his book, Ashlee explicitly mentioned his promise to Musk to get SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket flying by 2003. He describes his shocked face. His answer: “Really? Did we say that? I probably didn’t even know what the hell I was talking about.”