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Who’s Your Educational Elon?
Whose your Elon? Who do you admire? Whose words do you seek out for wisdom? Who can we learn from?
Elon Musk is popular but divisive. He’s brilliant, sure. But, his schedule, his ‘surge weeks’, and especially his treatment of staff can be brutal. Despite the fame and vast fortune, even he admits few people would actually want to live his life:
“My mind is a storm. I don’t think most people would want to be me. They may think they’d want to be me but they don’t know, they don’t understand.”
Yet, amongst the noise, there are things we can learn. We may not want to be Elon Musk, but there is method in his madness. A few examples:
Meetings: He allows staff to walk out of meeting or drop off calls if they aren’t needed or aren’t adding value. His approach: “It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time”. Large meetings are a last resort, and are always kept very short. Frequent, repeat meetings which happen just because they happen to be in the calendar are frowned upon.
Acronyms: Anything that requires an explanation inhibits communication. Acronyms are avoided. Nonsense is knocked on the head.
