Elon Musk Advises Fellow CEOs To Spend Less Time On PowerPoint

Tesla CEO and SpaceX Founder and CEO Elon Musk shared his advice for CEOs in an interview at The Wall Street Journal CEO Summit. In this article read why Elon Musk and other CEOs are banning PowerPoint in their companies.

Elon Musk is famous for his innovative approach at work. He was asked in the interview to share his opinion on whether leaders of American companies are fostering and prioritising innovation as much as we need right now. The answer from Musk was that he doesn't see that CEOs are focusing enough on product improvement.

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My advice would be to spend less time on finance, spend less time in the conference rooms, less time on PowerPoint, and more time on just trying to make your product as amazing as possible,

— shared Elon Musk.

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The general advice from Elon Musk is to spend more time on factory floors and focus less on the managerial tasks, such as finance and presentations. That way you spend more time with the product and fulfil the main goal of the company which should be developing the product.
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Watch the full interview below:

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It's not a radically new approach to spend less time on PowerPoint presentations in companies. There were many examples of CEOs banning PowerPoint at their meetings. Most famously Jeff Bezos from Amazon issued a new regulation that 4-page memos were to replace PowerPoint presentations.

In the interview, Elon Musk also mentions, "If you find yourself spending a lot of time getting presentations and reviewing spreadsheets, you are 'barking up the wrong tree'. That's the effect of the cause."

Another reason why PowerPoint seems to become unpopular between CEOs is that it might block creativity and collaboration in meetings. Steve Jobs wanted to bring more human interaction into meetings so he banned PowerPoint as well.

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The problem is not the PowerPoint, but the way people use it. In the end, it's just a tool, a really useful tool we would argue when it comes to meetings with the investors or public speaking events.

However, when you forget that it's a tool for companies and not a solution to their problems, then you get yourself a problem with productivity and collaboration. Listen to Elon Musk and other successful CEOs if you want to bring your product to the highest level.

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