Here’s more (probably the last) about Elon Musk based on the biography by Isaacson I’ve read. In my head, like “books similar to this one,” an intracerebral recommendation system pulled out two from the archives – Endurance by Alfred Lansing (Russian translation “Leadership in the Ice”) and “The Russian Management Model” by Prokhorov.
Let’s start with Prokhorov. Generally, his book is quite controversial. The main idea is that the organization/system/people in Russia have always existed (due to historical, political, climatic, and various other conditions) in only two extreme states—stable and unstable. Stable—everything is fine, stagnation, everyone evenly goes to work and gets paid. Unstable—red alert, aortic rupture, working 70 hours a day, seizing enemy crossings and outposts with a nail in the fist. And then half the book covers the justification and symptomatology. In particular, an excess of resources makes their more efficient use meaningless. Then why spend effort on analyzing management, improving business processes, quality systems, if there are internal reserves hidden, and external ones (for example, through administrative pressure)? Conclusion: artificially limit the available resources. Need more people for the operation—reduce it. Need more disks, memory, or processing power—reduce the size. Need more time to resolve issues in meetings—limit the time for meetings and the number of participants. This engages the brains and leads to faster progress. It is possible that the path to such progress is paved with maimed fates, burnt-out employees, and periodic mistakes, but here comes the effect of “a seesaw” and “all-in” bets—you need it so that 1) there was an excess of resources 2) at least once in the beginning you were incredibly lucky with all-in, and now you can risk more than others, losing only part at worst when others in the same situation would lose everything.
Why controversial—if one can somehow (with a star*) agree that Prokhorov’s theory somehow explains Russia and the USSR from ancient times to the end of the 20th century, it just doesn’t fit at all into the 21st century. At least the first 23 years of the 21st century don’t fit into it at all. Something broke in the 21st century.
The second book that comes to mind, “Endurance” (translated as “Leadership in the Ice”) tells about the legendary expedition of Ernest Shackleton (1914-1916) to Antarctica. Essentially, Shackleton overestimated his efforts, went all-in, but for a number of reasons, the plan of this heroic expedition failed at an early stage, as the ship carrying the team was crushed by ice and sank. After that, it was only about survival.
By the way, one can draw a parallel between the British conquest of Antarctica and the American conquest of space. In the history of conquering the South Pole, a key moment was the competition between Roald Amundsen’s expedition from Norway and Robert Scott from Great Britain. Amundsen reached the South Pole first (with a month’s difference) in 1911, beating Scott, which was perceived as a national defeat for Britain. Shackleton’s expedition was largely financed with the goal of regaining former glory. In the moon exploration, a similar role was played by the race between the USA and the USSR during the Cold War, during which the USA, though the first to successfully land a man on the Moon in 1969 during the Apollo 11 mission, failed to secure dominance—truthfully, for the USSR the Moon became uninteresting as soon as they lost the lead. But the USA didn’t secure it either—no one has flown to the Moon since then. And now, Elon Musk has regained the leadership for the Americans. Russia is now way behind. However, China has grown, and India is catching up.
Shackleton recruited for his “startup” using such advertising: “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger; safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.” He needed four qualities from people: optimism, patience, imagination, and courage.
In the end, he received 5,000 responses (including three women), from which he eventually selected a necessary crew of 27 people, dividing them into three piles labeled “Mad,” “Hopeless,” and “Possible.”
(Although it must be noted that there are very well-founded and scientific doubts that this legend about the advertisement and 5,000 responses is a fabricated tale. But I am sure that there’s a lot of similar stuff about Musk as well.)
Musk fired people from Twitter based on how well they knew their subject matter (“excellence”), then sifted them through a sieve of “trustworthiness” and further through the third sieve of persistence and perseverance (“drive”). In the end, he kept 25%.
If Shackleton had just died in the ice with his team, he would have been remembered as an idiot. But since he pulled his entire team out alive, without a single corpse, they don’t call his attempt to cross Antarctica idiotic (although if you look at what risks were ignored…). Musk has been more fortunate with such an approach so far. And each time he’s lucky, he not only gains more credit for future experiments, but also better risk management mechanisms.
But all of them, “The Russian Management Model” by Prokhorov, Musk, and Shackleton, are about the same thing. In cases when people start looking for solutions in extreme conditions, far from comfort, the solutions often emerge faster and better.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 