Elon Musk states the obvious – meetings are (almost) always a waste of time

Love him or loathe him, Elon Musk is dominating the business news cycle. When you’re rich enough to drop $44 billion on a bloated tech company like Twitter, people pay attention to what you say or do.

Musk and his management team aren’t wasting time laying off entire divisions at Twitter. He’s refusing to pay exorbitant air travel bills that former execs tallied, and he’s (for now) not paying severance packages to a handful of former Twitter decision makers.

Musk is also trying to change the Twitter culture. The tech maven forwarded “6 rules for success” to his employees with the message, “Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.”

(Disaster for Twitter and its shareholders would be bankruptcy. Musk has stated that bankruptcy is a possibility for the company if he can’t turn things around so the company makes a profit.)

Musk: ‘No need to be in that meeting? Skip it’

Three of Musk’s 6 rules relate to meetings. No surprise there: People say their companies schedule too many meetings, and worse, meetings aren’t productive or needed (a conversation between key players is typically all that’s needed to keep a project humming along).

Musk is urging Twitter managers and employees to:

• avoid large meetings at all costs. Large meetings waste “valuable energy and time” and “discourage debate.” CEOs and CFOs need to first ask if a large meeting will provide value to everyone being asked to attend. It it doesn’t, don’t schedule a large meeting in the first place.
• “leave a meeting if you’re not contributing.” Musk may be a demanding boss but a lot of folks would love working for a boss who’s cool with you ducking out of a meeting you feel you don’t need to be a part of. Musk says, “If a meeting doesn’t require your input, value or decisions, your presence is useless. It’s not rude to leave a meeting. But it’s rude to waste people’s time.”
• less-frequent meetings are optimal. Musk is clearly not a fan of recurring meetings common at many companies. Frequent meetings are the “best way to waste people’s time.” Meetings should only be used to “collaborate, attack issues head-on and solve urgent problems” as far as Musk is concerned. “You can resolve most issues without a meeting. Send a text. Send an email. Discuss on a Slack or Discord channel.”