Culture Building

After saving half a billion dollars for Seagate, in mid-2018, David Morton was positive that he could help turn Tesla's operations around and make it efficient. After the usual long courting with Executive recruiters and conversations with leaders at Tesla, he eagerly joined the company and rolled up his sleeves. However, he was in for a shock. His expectations of his leader and peers were not met. CEO Elon Musk wasn’t interested in details. David got no attention when he spent a lot of effort putting together details around a potential take-private transaction, according to people familiar with the matter. In September 2018, he quit Tesla after just 2 months of working there.

Tesla Inc. and its demanding leader Elon Musk is infamous for burning through top managers with impressive résumés in the past. Another notable exit was J.B. Straubel. J.B Strauble was a Tesla co-founder and the chief technology officer since 2005. He announced he’s handing the baton to Drew Baglino in July 2019, a vice president who climbed the engineering ranks for 13 years.

However, things have however taken a positive route after that incident. The focus in the company seems to be on folks who can build on top of what is already there. Tesla has figured out that the best place to look for is current employees who have proven their value and know to boost or tweak the existing culture - Culture Builders. Even with the changes after Elon took the hiring reins over , new candidates are put in more situational type interviews to see how they can augment Tesla's culture along with bringing in a diversity of thoughts and behavior.


When do you hire Culture Builders?

When you have a hard time onboarding senior leaders into your company, you know that either
a) there is something wrong with your leadership or
b) your new hire is having a hard time adapting to your culture.
You are better off promoting people who are promising in your organization and investing in their skills and leadership. Culture builders are your existing employees who are experienced, have a large circle of influence and understand the nuances of your organization.

Ultimately, by combining the principle of cultural building with that of great storytelling, businesses can gain a competitive edge in a fierce labor market. Put another way: Rather than looking for candidates to fit into what you already have, go after those who will add something you don’t have on top of what you have already built.
Now in David's situation above, I think, based on his experience, he should have let some time pass by to get more context around what Elon and his team members were thinking.  Understanding context is a leader's responsibility.


A Stoic perspective on building on top of what you already have:



This concept applies easily on to how you can build your organization.


From a Vedic perspective, the scope of Leadership changes as you move into a higher position

It's not just the power you get with a Leadership position, there are responsibilities which increases along with it. One of them is to understand people deeply around you and the context they operate in and make decisions.