GM’s EVs have been on a roll recently. After selling just Chevy Bolt for years, a wave of new models – now up to 17 fully electrified vehicles – has pushed the carmaker into second place in the US behind Tesla.
How did it get there? With a little help from a Tesla veteran.
GM board member Jon McNeil was president of Tesla during the development and introduction of Model 3, a crucial period for the company’s growth. One of the things he credit for Tesla’s success is how Elon Musk drove product meetings.
“No slides were our first rule,” McNeil told the audience earlier this month at TC All Stage in Boston. “You have to go through the right product.”
Each week, senior management would sit down with product leaders to review their progress. The practice was inspired by a meeting Musk had with Steve Jobs, McNeil said.
“There was this belief that I think is true: Steve Jobs did not have plenty of time or patience for Elon in the early days. And early in the early days Elon would try to chase Steve down on events and party in Silicon Valley to get advice. And Steve did not like Elon, and then he would often turn his back on him as he approached him.
“But one night Elon was lucky and said, ‘Steve if you had an advice for me as a young entrepreneur’ – he was just done Paypal and joined the team in Tesla – ‘What would it be?’ Steve said: ‘Elon, you’re now in the hardware business, but the hardware business is a lot like the software business.
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Musk took it to the heart, McNeil said, and the concept of a perfect product became central to the product development in Tesla.
“What we were looking for first and foremost was surprise and joy. Like, we do something that just wants to make someone go wow or laugh or have fun?
“Crazy example of that is the speed button,” McNeil said, referring to a software button labeled “emission test mode” that would simulate flatulence through the car’s speakers.
The company also appreciated minimalism, which on the software side meant to keep features available in fewer than two taps on the screen.
“It has to be a kind of a no brainer for the average user. Then we would double the designer – the main designer was always in the room – and then we would say, ok, Franz, now it makes it beautiful.”
Meetings like those where the actual product was reviewed not a mockup helped preserve Tesla’s culture as it grew, McNeil said. “You can imagine the culture that is being communicated when people bring their A -Games to CEO every week. Because you don’t want to bring your B game to CEO -especially the CEO because he wants to shoot you,” he said.
“It keeps this company on a week’s kaens of innovation. Every week they make progress due to product reviews.”
McNeil left Tesla in early 2018. In 2022 he was added to the board of directors at GM.
“One of the things I’m most proud of is Mary Barra, CEO and Mark Reuss, President, [who oversee] A revenue company of 275,000 people, $ 200 billion, runs product reviews each week where there are no slides. You have to see the right product [whether it’s] Hardware, software. If it’s hardware, it’s in space. You touch it. You feel it, ”he said.
“These things are so powerful. And it has led to GM’s introduction of 17 EVs, now the second best -selling EVs in the country. Because they are just on product, every week.”