Project Management Tip: Make Friends

I always begin every project by making friends with all the key people.

People like helping their friends. People like talking to their friends. If everyone’s your friend, everyone wants to help you, everyone communicates with you, everyone works hard for you. You don’t have to waste so much time convincing everyone of everything and bugging people to do stuff, because they actually WANT to do what you need them to do. If you go further and help them be friends with each other, it multiplies again. Your per-hour productivity and speed of execution go through the roof.

So, that’s good. I prefer it. Helps me be a profit center so I can make money at Tesla. Also, friends are fun right?

Making friends at work is so easy. You can literally just tell people they’re your friend, and they’re your friend. All you have to do is express sincere gratitude for even the smallest thing, then at the end add, “you’re my friend!” Zero people don’t laugh and feel good if you do that. At Tesla you can send a spark coin like that to anyone from the bottom to the top and they’ll love you forever. Good strategy for rapid execution, and also career development, since the key people are always amazing people from whom you can learn tremendously.