Elon Musk: Crazy Eccentric or Brilliant Entrepreneur?

When I began to read Walter Isaacson’s book, I had no idea what a roller coaster ride it would be. Isaacson was given almost full access to Musk, his friends and wives, children, colleagues and employees. Musk didn’t require his approval of the manuscript, and didn’t read the book before it was published. This access gives a remarkable picture of an amazing, complicated and brilliant man. In spite of all his shortcomings, his achievements inspired me to wish I could meet this unique man of the 21^st century.

Elon Musk grew up in South Africa in a brutal environment:

South Africa in the 1980s was a violent place, with machine-gun attacks and knife killings common. Once, when Elon and Kimbal got off a train on their way to an anti-apartheid music concert, they had to wade through a pool of blood next to a dead person with a knife still sticking out of his brain.

Musk believed that these early experiences, in addition to growing up with an angry and abusive father, likely played a role in the man he became. He said this about his father:

He would end every tirade by telling Elon how pathetic he was. Elon would just have to stand there, not allowed to leave. ‘It was mental torture,’ Elon says, pausing for a long time and choking up slightly. ‘He sure knew how to make anything terrible.’

Whether these experiences shaped his later life, Musk admitted to having difficulty in forming intimate relationships. One of his friends said this about him:

He had trouble picking up social cues. Empathy did not come naturally, and he had neither the desire nor the instinct to be ingratiating.

His mother, Maye, said that he believed he was on the Asperger’s spectrum, and she thought he was probably right. He was never officially evaluated.

Musk was absolutely clear on the goals for his most well-known companies: Tesla, an electric and fully automated self-driving car; Space X, to fly to Mars and make us a multi-planetary civilization; and Twitter, to realize a free speech platform.

The effect on his personal and work relationships was significant. He married several times; in some cases, he didn’t marry but had a total of 12 children with a number of women. He appeared to be sincere in his belief that having children was important to the human race, due to declining birthrates. And he lived out his belief.

Regarding his work relationships, there were many similarities among all the companies that he eventually owned, so I don’t necessarily make a distinction among them in the examples I give. Musk was not an easy person to work for. He had specific expectations for employees’ performance:

Musk had deployed what he called the ‘idiot index.’ That was the ratio of the total cost of a component to the cost of its raw materials. Something with a high idiot index—say, a component that cost $1,000 when the aluminum that composed it cost only $100—was likely to have a design that was too complex or a manufacturing process that was too inefficient. As Musk put it, ‘If the ratio is high, you’re an idiot.’

He also demanded that every employee commit to arduous work schedules and meet his projections for completing projects. If anyone dared to say a task wasn’t possible, he either fired them or re-stated the expectation, leaving them to their own devices. It was amazing how often impossible deadlines were met. He also insisted that the engineers form teams with the design staff and work closely on development. Eventually, he insisted that as many components as possible be manufactured in-house to save time and money.

Strangely enough, Musk seemed to go over the edge when things were going well. He loved the challenge of solving problems. He was known in his various companies for his meltdowns. His brother, Kimbal, was key in helping him return to reality.

Musk decided he had to move himself, literally, to the factory floors and lead an all-in surge; he did this on a few occasions. It was a tactic —personally surging into the breach 24/7 with an all-hands-on-deck cadre of fellow fanatics—that came to define the maniacal intensity that he demanded at his companies.

For his companies to be successful, he expected them to be efficient in developing products, as well as to be fiscally responsible. Here’s one example:

When an engineer came to Musk’s cubicle and told him that the air-cooling system for the payload bay of the Falcon 9 would cost more than $3 million, he shouted over to Gwynne Shotwell in her adjacent cubicle to ask what an air-conditioning system for a house cost. About $6,000, she said. So the SpaceX team bought some commercial air-conditioning units and modified their pumps so they could work atop the rocket.

To make sure that decisions were not just arbitrary, Musk developed what he called his algorithm. This was his explanation for the algorithm and its requirements:

‘Unless a sensor is absolutely needed to start an engine or safely stop an engine before it explodes, it must be deleted,’ he wrote in an email to SpaceX engineers. ‘Going forward, anyone who puts a sensor (or anything) on the engine that isn’t obviously critical will be asked to leave.’

1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it.

2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later.

3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist.

4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps.

5. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step.

There are many, many more stories that Isaacson shares to give us Musk’s inside story. He was a mass of contradictions. He didn’t believe co-workers should be too attached to each other, but he believed in teamwork. He knew his plan to lead Tesla, Space X, Neuralink, Starlink and Twitter would be impossibly demanding, yet he was unwilling to relinquish control. He probably took more risks than any other company leader, but when they didn’t work out, he’d just try another solution.

Isaacson closed his book with two fascinating paragraphs:

(from Musk)

‘This is how civilizations decline. They quit taking risks. And when they quit taking risks, their arteries harden. Every year there are more referees and fewer doers.’ That’s why America could no longer build things like high-speed rail or rockets that go to the moon. ‘When you’ve had success for too long, you lose the desire to take risks.’

(from Isaacson)

Sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man-children who resist potty training. They can be reckless, cringeworthy, sometimes even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world.