A response needed to this discussion board post please below… If you believe Musk is a better leader, you need respond to a student in your secondary posts who also chose Musk and explain why Bezos is the more effective leader and teambuilder. The discussion board post below… Both Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have shown they have sacrificed much to get their companies to the heights of where they are. Both had sleeping quarters feet from their desks. Jeff would have a sleeping bag under his desk. Elon would have a bean bag cushion, where employees would kick him, per his request when they walked in at dawn at Zip2, (Vance, 2017). They both have proved they understand the “Law of Sacrifice’ as John C. Maxwell put it. “Every person who has achieved any success in life has made sacrifices to do so” (Maxwell, 2007, p. 222). Jeff Bezos borrowed 100 thousand dollars from his parents when first starting Amazon and quit his job on wall street to start a new company. Moving a company across country to Seattle. Yet, as he has grown more success, he has been able to step back and have more of a work life balance or as he calls it “Work Life Harmony” than Elon Musk (Hayes, 2021, 02:14). Jeff Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon but still provides advice and vision to the company as an executive. Bezos now has a measured approach to work and does not put too much on his plate in comparison to Musk. “As a senior executive, you get paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions. Your job is not to make thousands of decisions every day” (Hayes, 2021, 07:34). Jeff Also ensures that he gets an adequate eight hours sleep. His philosophy is “If you shortchange your sleep, you might get a couple of extra productive hours, but that productivity might be an illusion.” (Hayes, 2021,05:34) Elon Musk on the other hand pushes the limits of what the human body can accomplish in a day. He has done everything in his power to stay CEO of both Tesla and Space X. This might be because in 1996 he was ousted as CEO from Zip2, so he has been very vocal about maintaining the long-term goals of both companies. Elon Musk has sacrificed so much in his life as he started out immigrating to Canada at 17 with nowhere to sleep. Elon Musk stands out though, because after he made millions selling his company Zip2, he then put all his personal fortune back into these two new companies of Space X and Tesla. In 2008 recession, you could find Elon Musk again sleeping in the factory floor of Tesla and borrowing whatever money he could muster to make payroll. “Elon said ‘I will spend my last dollar on these companies. If we have to move into Justine’s parents’ basement, we’ll do it.” Antonio Gracias recalling a dinner with Musk during the 2008 financial crisis (McFarland, 2021). Task Masters: Like the business giants of Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs of the previous generation. Employees of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have been accused of being Micromanaging Task Masters. Researching what the employees experience in some of the companies that these two titans own is more like that of joining the military. Engineers do a tour of duty, then leave when they cannot take it anymore. Jeff Bezos main goal in business has been an almost religious devotion to the customer to the exclusion of all else. “When I interview people I tell them, ‘You can work long, hard, or smart, but at Amazon.com you can’t choose two out of three,” Bezos wrote in the 1997 letter (Abadi, 2018). Jeff Bezos is more reserved from the public, the only glimpse the outside world sees of his controlling personality is YouTube videos of panicked warehouse employees rushing to fill their orders. History shows that for companies as wealthy as Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Tesla to succeed, there has always been a task master. “If you’re not good, Jeff will chew you up and spit you out. And if you are good, he will jump on your back and ride you into the ground, is one quote about Bezos’s management style in the book” (Keneally, 2014). Elon Musk is the ultimate micro manager. He is famous for his ability to answer the questions of the most minuet, complex components of either a rocket to a Tesla battery. This is not necessarily a bad thing for the manager’s job, is inherently a problem-solving job (Whetten & Cameron, 2016, p.139). Some say the problem with Elon is that he expects the same level of devotion from his employees. One employee recalled an email from Musk after he missed an event to see the birth of his child. “That is no excuse. I am extremely disappointed. You need to figure out where your priorities are. We’re changing the world and changing history, and you either commit or you don’t” (McFarland, 2021). Another example was when Ryan Popple recalled Musk’s retort when an employee complained in Tesla’s early days that they were working too hard “I would tell those people they will get to see their families a lot when we go bankrupt (McFarland, 2021). History shows that for companies as wealthy as Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Tesla to succeed, there has always been a task master. That is the price of being a part of history. Vision: Both Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos childhoods were changed by a love of science fiction. Many of the inventions they have created have their origins in Star Trek, like Amazon Echo. Jeff Bezos vision that helped him start Blue Origin is that of getting thousands of humans working and living in space. His calculation of the amount of energy humans need will require solar panels covering all the earth. Space he says, does not have the shade and night problems plaguing the solar industry now. We can have all the power and industrial needs met in space, leaving earth for humans. Elon Musk vision is to terraform Mars and make humans an interplanetary species. He sees the opportunity for humans to travel to Mars is possibly a short one. Citing the numerous times planet earth has been victim of asteroids or global warfare (Brown, 2021). I see both amazing men as giants in history and find the feats they accomplished in their own life mesmerizing. Jeff Bezos is the better businessman, having not put Amazon in any position other than continuously gaining wealth. Even as the world shuttered from Covid 19, Amazon has only grown more essential. Jeff has also worked with his would-be competitors of NASA, and Lockheed Martin for his rockets and contracts. Where Elon Musk has on every occasion tried to undercut the established companies in the Car and Space industries. Although, I see Elon Musk as the better leader for the simple fact that his vision is so overwhelmingly strong. Elon has had a devote cult like following from a good portion of the population and a religious zealotry from his employees. The beehive of activity described at both Space X and Tesla, is a motivating force that makes me want to get to work just hearing about it. He has a “Vision that focuses on something that makes a profound difference, something that outlasts one’s own life, and something that has enduring impact” (Whetten & Cameron, 2016, p.460). That is a vision I would love to be a part of and see it to fruition. That would also be much to the chagrin of my wife and three children.
