Would Elon Musk approve of sync-up meetings?

Did you know Elon Musk attended Stanford University for only 2 days? Stupid idea? Not so much if we talk about his net worth, right?

If you look at his career history, you’ll find he has founded a number of successful companies: SpaceX, Tesla, Starlink, and the list goes on. But what does he do differently at his companies that sets them apart from the rest?

Maybe the answer lies in his recent email about meetings with Tesla employees he sent last year. Let’s take a look.

What did Elon Musk say about meetings?

So, his recent email to employees at Tesla went viral, and for the right reasons. He wrote down 3 commandments everyone must follow to improve the meeting culture in the organization. Ones that would enhance productivity and make meetings more meaningful. What are they?

1. No large meetings

Who do you invite when organising a meeting? Do you invite employees regardless of their need to be present, or do you thoughtfully pick the ones who will actually contribute? If you have been doing the former, according to Musk, you are doing it all wrong.

If you go by what Musk asks his employees to do, you must not have more than 4-6 attendees in a meeting. Doable?

2. Leave if your presence is not required

Let’s say you have been invited to a meeting in which you have no role to play. Nothing. Nada. Zero.

What do you do? Leave? But wouldn’t that be disrespectful?

Well, if Musk were your boss, what he would find disrespectful is the meeting organizer wasting your time by needlessly having you there. He would, in fact, expect you to make better use of your time and actually leave.

3. No frequent or long meetings

Aren’t you annoyed when you find you have a workday filled with meetings? And some so long that they would actually prevent you from making any substantial progress in your tasks?

It seems like you aren’t alone. Because the Tesla owner feels so too. And this is probably why his third meeting rule says no to frequent and long meetings unless they are for matters immediate and urgent.

What do the stats say?

We read what Musk had to say about meetings. But what do the numbers say? Do they agree with Musk, or was that just some big talk? Let’s find out.

Studies have found that, on average, an employee spends 4 hours a week on meetings.
To add to that, on average, an employee spends 31 hours a month on unproductive meetings.
And every year, an estimated $37 billion is lost to unproductive meetings.

It seems like Musk wasn’t wrong about reducing the time wasted in meetings after all.

But we have so many meetings in our organization that are necessary to hold. What do we do about them? What about the sync-up meetings we run? Shall we cancel them altogether?

Well, if you are curious to know, take the Musk Meeting Test.

Do Sync-Up meetings fit the bill?

So, we know sync-up meetings are a type of meeting held regularly to share progress, identify obstacles, and find solutions to them. These team syncs mirror stand-up meetings in a way but are much more flexible in relation to them.

The flexibility they provide is a reason companies choose to go ahead with them instead of traditional stand-up meetings. But here’s the question we have in mind: Would these sync meetings pass the Musk Meeting Test? Do these team syncs check all the boxes?

There’s only one way to find out.

Test #1

According to the first Musk Meeting Rule, your meetings must not be large. Now, let’s talk about the feature of sync-up meetings in relation to this.

In reality, team syncs can be both small and large, depending on the needs of your organisation. You can conduct a sync-up with just two attendees, or you can run one with multiple departments sitting together. It really is the purpose of the meeting that will determine the number of attendees at this meeting. But do meeting purposes always select only the required meeting attendees? No, right?

So, if the sync-up meetings in your organization are large, i.e., they are conducted with more than 6 people in attendance, it fails the first test.

It's okay. We have two more to go.

Test #2

So, your team syncs are large, with more than 4 to 6 people in attendance, by Musk’s definition. If your sync-up meeting is large, there is a high chance you have attendees who were not required to be there in the first place.

So, do you allow those attendees with no apparent contribution to the meeting to leave? Or do you make it mandatory for everyone to attend until the last second, lest it seem disrespectful?

We know that most companies choose to do the latter. And if you, my friend, belong to one such company, I have bad news for you: your sync meetings fail the second test too.

Up for the third one?

Test #3

There’s one feature that clearly distinguishes stand-up meetings from sync meetings, despite their similar nature. Guess what? The fact that stand-up meetings are required to be held daily whereas sync meetings aren't

Sync-ups are held on a need-based basis, and their running time is usually not more than 10–15 minutes.

So, what was the third meeting rule about? No frequent or long meetings

So, do sync-up meetings pass the third Musk Meeting Test? Yes, they do!

Will Musk approve?

Now, the question we started this blog with is: Would Elon Musk approve of sync-up meetings?

What do you think?

Look, as much as we’d love to pass a test, sometimes we fall short by just a bit or a chunk too large. From what we saw above, sync-ups pass only one test that we set out to take. But is there reason to be disheartened? Certainly, no.

Why? Because for everything that your team syncs failed at, the asynchronous follow-ups from Sup Bot passed.

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