This is a management performance assessment work. It has been prepared to study and analyse Elon Musk’s career. For that reason, it’s only right that his beginnings in South Africa(1973), his teenage and ealy adulthood in Canada as well as later life in the US, be afforded some space. Elon, as it has been introduced, was born in apartheid South Africa to a Canadanian mother and a South African father. His father was an engineer and his mother was a nutritionist/model. Schooling in apartheid South Africa was more or less of an industrialized society quality for White people such as the Musks. Elon has been reported by his teachers to have been an already mature student when he was in grade school. Such characteristics are rare so what came later cannot be much of a surprise.
His move to Canada was made to avoid conscription to the white supremacist army of apartheid that he, obviously, disagreed with. Having a Canadian woman for a mother was the advantage that Elon had over other White boys. He moved to his mother’s birth country and continued with his education along with doing what are known as odd jobs. The pivotal moment of his life was crossing the border south for college in no less a place than the University of Pennsylvania. At Penn, Elon studied physics and economics. Those two fields will feature in this report in a prominent way. Elon’s global fame is attributable to his eclectic successes that come to the regular person as names such as PayPal, Teslanand SpaceX among others. The stories behind these now very popular brands are to be reviewed hereafter in extended detail.
Prior to his success in business in the US, Elon had created a trivial computer game in his teenage years that he sold to a nerd magazine for $500. That is what will help explain his high aptitude to a person unfamiliar with the digital world that is supreme in this stage of human evolution and probably forever. A computer game can only made by someone who understands the whole science of binary digitization. That means that for Elon to be able to code a game he must have had preliminary computing knowledge that may have been gained formally or otherwise. That knowledge was expanded, obviously, as he grew up and encountered more complex digital technologies. When he undertook to create Paypal, his abilities behind the keyboard were already known. That is why silicon valley bigwigs such as Peter Thiel joined hands with him to transform his X.com into PayPal.
The company was later purchased by Ebay and Musk made millions from the sale. That sale is what opens space for introduction of Elon’s other management success story: Space Exploration Technologies. His wish to see humanity colonize planet Mars has been the inspiration for this company. It was founded in 2002 and the express goal of cutting space flight costs by 10 was already public. Their breakthrough came when NASA contracted SpaceX to deliver supplies to space equipment for $1.5 billion. Given that Musk turned down a grad school offer from Stanford after a few months there, his work at SpaceX makes him a remarkable fortune builder. The next company to support the decision to profile Musk is Tesla Motors.
Tesla Motors came under Musk’s control in 2004 when he made a $70 million investment. Two years later, the Tesla Roadster was launched with extensive involvement in the engineering by Elon himself. Wrangling at the top of Tesla Motors saw Elon become the CEO after serving as charman for the while he’d been with the company. Mark Eberhard had been CEO beforehand. After a difficult period that was characterized by financial uncertainty courtesy of the 2009 crash, Musk was able to raise $226 million in the Tesla IPO of June 2010. Before ending this introduction, it’s improper to not mention one other company whose very nature makes the crux of Musk’s managerial expertise: SolarCity. It’s straightforward that the company is meant to build an alternative energy world. Those goals draw from Elon’s visionary mind and a bold one while at it. The ensuing passages will tackle those aspects of his phenomenon under a number of headlines.
Leadership
Management is a term that cannot be divorced from another one: leadership. There a lot of definitions of leadership but it suffices to say that the salient aspect of a leader is the ability to influence others, ( p 8). In Elon’s case, this aspect has been evident from his days as a nightclub owner to current times when he has been able to purchase a broadcasting giant known as Twitter. It may strike one as odd to refer to Twitter as a broadcast outfit but social media is essentially that. It is a platform where every user is a broadcaster. Back to the topic of leadership, Elon’s style is important in any analysis of his success. His ability to influence other people flowers from his superb intelligence and a temperament that can only be descibed as Obamasque. Even in moments of strain, Elon doesn’t go too low. When things are going way better than either he, or his detractors expected, he doesn’t take the bully pulpit or gloat at those he beat. To most observers, those are the highly useful leadership qualities.
The challenges of leadership in today’s business environment are a direct product of globalization. In the business world, globalization has meant that the increase in opportunity created by easy access to information, capital and labour, makes competition unprecedetally tough. The global flow of financial resources and the ease with which people are able to transform ideas into digital businesses have driven the old management model to the sewers. The former model emphasized differences between the managerial cadre and the non managerial ones. Working for Elon Musk has been reported to be a delight because he blurs the lines between the above two supposed groups in his organizations.
Planning.
This is where Elon’s heft as a management wizard lies. Elon had the companies that he owns today in his head all the way back in Philadelphia, (pg 196). He had already made his mind as to what were the most important human needs to having organized existence. He listed the human concerns as follows: the internet, sustainable energy, space exploration, artificial intelligence, and rewriting human genetics, (Houser, 2016). The thinking that went into compilation of that list is what this paper will try to present. Given that Musk was born in 1973, the relevant scientific breakthroughs to those five areas were already in print. To take every one of those issues and discuss it as well as the challenges surrounding it may not be possible here. What can be done is establish the relationship between them and appraise how Musk has dealt with each.
The internet was commercialized in 1994. It had been developed in lockstep with the rest of digital computing owing from the advancements from quantum mechanics. The transistors that are used to store and share data in form of electric current were invented in 1947. For people such as Elon, the fast and reliable flow of information that computing afforded humanity were business opportunities. They could already see the vast potential to satisfy human needs. The reality behind that foresight is that a human life is a collection of needs and satisfaction thereof or lack of it. Thus, Elon knew that the manufacturing that created material wealth in the 20th century would become a lot more profitable with digitization therefore the finite energy resources that were in use then needed alternatives. Otherwise, continued reliance on them would lead to economic collapse. That’s where electric motoring comes in. Electric transportation would solve a problem that humanity has had since the species evolved: getting ourselves and provisions around.
Having established the connection between communication and transportation, it’s time to take list of concerns from the planet to space. Earth’s resources being finite, Elon put his eyes on Mars as the next point of human settlement. But that cannot be easily done without high powered computing machines and methods. Thus artificial intelligence would have to be used to solve problems that humans may take centuries to do the same. Finally, he realized that human output depends on genetic endowment as well as environmental influences. As such, for human beings to reach their full potential, genetic rewriting would have to be undertaken so that the faulty components that nature equips every human being with can be remedied. That background has been given to set Elon apart from the managers of other companies who are, unsurprisingly, less illustrious. With the above summary of human concerns that demanded attention, Elon has made himself into a planning wizard.
Vision
The above presentation of how Elon planned on human needs prior to entering business proper jells with another of his many analytical thoughts. When questioned on win his companies and buys his merchandise (pg 401). The fact that he approaches business from the standpoint of solving human problems, for due non-monopolistic pay, instead of vainglorious, largely fraudulent access to revenue, is the centrepiece of his mystique. He can see that Allatheocratic extremism stretches the defence budgets of poor countries and puts a lot of lives in danger. That leads to renewables energy sources being an urgent need to bankrupt the financiers of Allatheocratic extremism. Dependency on fossil fuels has flattered the extremists that they are indispensable. However, with electric vehicles and reliable solar sources of energy, Allatheocratic extremism will have no money to underwrite its destructive agenda.
Ethical Concerns
Thinking though the above brief exploration of national and international security, one can’t fail to see Elon’s moral fortitude. He is clearly on the side of life rather than destruction of it. He seeks solutions to problems that most of us aren’t blessed enough to even grasp. That is how he has recently engaged in a row during his first days at the helm of Twitter. His intimate knowledge of digital technologies leads him to understand that the virtual world can be both exciting and misleading. He knows that Twitter can be used to misinform the public as well as incite aggression violence, (pg 45). To draw the line between working against negative speech and keeping conversation alive has been the quarrel recently. Political correctness is nowadays a fad and Elon doesn’t seem to be a fan. Thus, when he took over, a lot of people at Twitter were shocked by the changes he announced. Controversy doesn’t seem to cow him because he understands that tech companies can be destructive to democracy and the ethos of a free society. Balancing power with ethics is difficult and he seems to be ahead of other executives.
Organization
Musk has a way of organizing his businesses to leave little space to vulnerabilities. At SpaceX, 70 percent of the component parts are produced in-house, (Wu & Calic, 2022). Tesla has announced to get more involved in the making of batteries for its cars by entering the lithium mining business. The other aspect of his clear emphasis on independence is use of closed technologies. At SpaceX for instance, the satellites up above can hardly be compatible with other space travel companies. That keeps his operations at a clear distance from other industry players. Matters of technology are central in management because they largely determine what the end product will be therefore how clients and customers will percieve it, (pg 284) The obvious advantage of having a closed technology policy is that Musk has total control of the company, it’s operations and end product/ service.
Other Companies
The similarities between Elon and the executives of other important corporations are striking. Google and Alphabet Inc come to mind when one thinks of Elon’s early life. Sergey Brin and Larry Page went to Standford- the same swanky school that Elon opted out of. Both Elon and the Google founding duo are superb engineers and their technologies are used by almost everyone. Their planning approach that is based on finding solutions to human problems is the foundation upon which operations in their companies are based on. Google’s success in creating a search engine was borne out of realization of the need to put the whole world’s information in the same place. That led to the invention of a web crawler that tracks almost all cyberspace activity and brings the information to users. What could be better to advertisers, producers and other commercial activity people? Google is ever the go-to place for anyone who needs the world’s attention.
Personal opinion
It’s not surprising that I agree with Musk’s approach to planning a commercial enterprise. That is apparent from the above analysis. Business cycles do exist and in a dynamically and fast changing business environment as the one that globalization has created, there are bound to be hiccups in revenue and net worth. In line with that, it shouldn’t shock people the way it does when enterpreneurs such as Elon lose fortunes and regain them. Their genius is in identifying human needs and their luck is in having the educational background and smarts to learn the science behind inventing and innovating the tools required to tackle those human problems. It is really a delight for me that the business leaders of today are digital pros. The stories behind their respective successes always have a funny detail. Jeff Bezos, for instance, set out to build Amazon in a time when few knew what the Internet was. The old guard of finance has had to climb up a steep learning curve to get what is being spoken about in boardroom meetings if at all. Congressional hearings where tech giants are in the dock usually have an elderly senator or house member asking a risible question. Overall, therefore, while I do not think that people such as Elon are invincible, I stand with my analysis that they are the best equipped to solve human problems and their methods will always bear fruit. Such fruit is what capital is looking to invest in therefore will be highly profitable.
Conclusion
This paper has taken the career of one Elon Musk and scrutinized it in detail. His history and succeses were introduced first. Five topics have been selected to cover his management expertise. The one thing that runs though this assessment that Elon Musk has a stellar brain and his personality supports the pursuits he engages in. Money will be made and more will but the needs that human beings have to satisfy are not the domain of regular people. It takes humility to appreciate the kind of things people such as Elon commit themselves to do and then come off shining. Internet trolls obviously have their place in life but they simply can’t engineer electric cars, send people to Mars or get money across the world more or less instantly.
