With any other CEO, it would have been a five-alarm emergency.
Yet, Elon Musk’s recent last-minute after-hours all-hands with Tesla workers was a reminder that the company’s front man — perhaps singularly free from the norms other chiefs abide by — can get away with a lot.
The big question is: how much?
Even though he’s convinced employees over the years to work in tents and sleep at the office, his leeway with workers, investors, and customers isn’t endless, Musk observers told Business Insider.
“There’s no version where he’s in this many things all at once, and it goes well,” Wil Schroter, founder and CEO of Startups.com, a tech accelerator, told BI.
He pointed to the sheer number of items on Musk’s to-do list — from controlling a half dozen companies, including Tesla, X, and SpaceX, to trying to remake the federal government.
A big ask of workers
Musk’s decision to hold a companywide meeting with little notice at 9 p.m. in Austin — with tech glitches further delaying the start — sends several negative signals, said Melissa Schilling, a professor of management and organizations at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
Schilling, who has studied Musk’s career and businesses, told BI that among them is a sense of uncertainty.
“That’s a really dangerous position for someone who’s so central to the brand,” Schilling said.
Starting a meeting when bedtime routines might be underway can ding worker morale, too.
If you signal to employees that their time isn’t valuable, “you really damage that relationship,” she said.
It’s one thing to flout some corporate norms in the early stages of a company, but Musk is well past that honeymoon, according to Schilling.
“His actions affect too many people now to get away with the boys-will-be-boys behavior,” she said.
Schroter said Musk often gets given the benefit of the doubt but that if he had to deal with a major crisis, such as Tesla shares dropping 80% from their December high (they’re down by about 50%), Musk stans would be less forgiving.
In such a case, “you don’t get to go screw around with the government and do cuts,” Schroter said, referring to Musk’s other role atop Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency advisory group.
Crashing on the couch
It’s not the first time Musk’s attitude to work has drawn attention.
The world’s richest man has famously said he slept on the floor at the Tesla factory when the company was mired in “production hell” for its Model 3. He’s also said he crashed on the couch while in the throes of refashioning Twitter into X.
Even though some founder-mode flourish is part of Musk’s operating model, Schilling said the evening Tesla meeting suggests unpreparedness and that he only belatedly realized something important was happening at the company.
Tesla has suffered recent instances of vandalism to its vehicles and at its showrooms, which he’s attributed to those on the political left, and a slide in the stock.
The carmaker’s shares regained some ground Friday as investors appeared heartened by Musk’s message during Thursday’s meeting. In it, he implored workers to hang onto their shares and talked up the company’s Cybercab.
‘A little bit chaotic’
One reason Musk can swing a last-minute evening meeting that in virtually any other company would raise eyebrows or worry staff is that most people already expect him to be “a little bit chaotic” and anything but traditional, said Dorie Clark, a communication coach who teaches at Columbia Business School and wrote the book “The Long Game.”
“This is a person who smoked dope on the Joe Rogan show,” she told BI.
Clark said Musk’s long-standing reputation as an improvisational, emotional CEO might blunt possible concerns that he is erratic.
She said that the meeting could have instead sent a message to employees that Musk is still paying attention and cares about his companies.
Yet, Clark said, that alone likely won’t be enough to continue to buoy worker and investor sentiment without further action to show he’s engaged in addressing challenges at Tesla.
The Steve Jobs effect
Schroter, who runs the tech accelerator, said Musk’s decision to speak directly to workers is more effective than sending an email or relying on a corporate comms team.
“There’s something different when you stand in front of people, even if it’s on Zoom, where they see you talking, they see you emote,” Schroter said.
It’s a way of showing you share their concerns, he said. Yet, Schroter said, how much leaders can ask of workers is often bound by “how much they’re willing to follow you through a fire.”
He said that for Musk, like Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, workers’ loyalty is often high enough that employees will strive to meet tall expectations, including long hours.
“There’s only one Elon Musk,” he said. “This isn’t me fanboying him at all. I’m just calling it what it is.”
Schroter said Musk’s track record shows he usually comes out ahead but that ” 99.9% of CEOs” don’t have the luxury to ask as much as he does.
“The people that follow him — the people that work for him — believe in the cult of Elon,” Schroter said. “Most founders or CEOs don’t have anywhere near that kind of pull.”
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