The Vision of Elon Musk

Elon Musk has a big, universe-denting vision.

Musk is leading the world to a more sustainable future through electric cars.

It's important to have big visions. Big visions change the world. Big visions excite people. Big visions generate electricity. Big visions bring the future forward.

One of my favorite quotes comes from Arthur Ashe, "Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can."

I was challenged by a team member when I shared this quote. I was told that it wasn't a big enough vision. What my accuser didn't understand is that there's a difference between vision and tactics.

It's important to point to the top of the mountain, and say, "That's where we're going." A leader sets the vision, but it is going to take a thousand individual steps to get there.

Anytime we start something new, we'll have questions that we don't have the answers to. Even scarier, we're going to run into questions that we never thought to ask. We don't know what we don't know.

Guy Kawasaki wrote about this in his excellent book, The Art of the Start. If he had known what he was getting himself as Macintosh Chief Evangelist position at Apple, he never would have said yes.

The point is, we're not going to have all the answers when we start, we just have to start. We have to take the first step. And when we take the first step, we gain information to help us take a better second step.

I'm not saying that we have to do no planning, no question asking, I'm saying that when we've answered all the questions we can reasonably answer, it's time to start taking action, and the action will help us answer the unanswered questions.

Visions are important. Visions teach us what questions we should be asking. Visions keep us on course. A vision is like the kiddie bumpers at a bowling alley. We may wander but a vision will prevent us from rolling into the gutter.

This brings us back to Elon Musk. Musk has a vision but he's also putting one foot in front of the other to accomplish it.

When Musk first wrote his Master Plan back in 2006, it consisted of four steps:

1. Create a low volume car, which would necessarily be expensive
2. Use that money to develop a medium volume car at a lower price
3. Use that money to create an affordable, high volume car
4. Provide solar power. No kidding, this has literally been on our website for 10 years.

https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux

Musk had a vision, but he also started where he was. "The reason we had to start off with step 1 was that it was all I could afford to do with what I made from PayPal. I thought our chances of success were so low that I didn't want to risk anyone's funds in the beginning but my own."

In 10 years, Musk has accomplished steps 1, 2, and 4. Step 3 is right around the corner.

Accomplishing visions is tough, even for billionaires. Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.