“Elon Musk” (Walter Issacson, 2023) kept coming up on my Audible feed and I was headed on a long roadtrip, so I listened. This blog post is my critique of the personal & leadership development book. Each of my critiques review the key message of the book, the high-level concepts, the book’s areas of strengths, and where it falls short. I conclude each critique with an overall assessment ranking (1-10 ascending) of its effectiveness in providing the reader applicable lessons in personal and/or leadership development.
Overview: The biography explores the detailed and intimate life of Elon Musk from his childhood in South Africa, his family dynamics, his move to Canada, up to present day. Issacson explores what motivates Elon, to include a general sense of curiosity, drama, and risk-taking.
High-level concepts: Entrepreneurs and business-minded individuals will enjoy the walk through of his founding of Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla, and his purchase of Twitter. Others will enjoy the character development components of his family, wives, children and other narratives. Engineers will enjoy his “outside the box” approach to all of the manufacturing components of his life.
Areas of Strengths: Issacson is a master storytelling. As with his other best sellers, this biography does not disappoint. You will laugh, cry, get angry and feel inspired from one chapter to the next. In a world that thinks that a 10-minute YouTube video is long, this comprehensive book will keep you engaged the whole time. It’s really a book for everyone.
Supplemental Information: A collection of Walter Issacson’s work can be found here and/or you can read or listen to the Elon Musk book here.
Where it Falls Short: It’s exceptionally long which requires dedication. The audio book is more than 20 hours, and there are nearly 700 pages. From a leadership development standpoint, its discouraging to see there are no attempts on his behalf to cultivate a strong CEO mentality, versus a Chief Engineer mentality.
Overall Assessment & Why: I rate it an 9 out of 10.From a personal development book perspective, this is an interesting lesson in inspiring us all to ask more questions, act more and achieve more. From a leadership development book, it’s a “what not to do” case, except for one scenario. You do not want to be cold to your employees, cause unnecessary stress, and be the boss that constantly lives in the “the storm.” The positive leadership development attribute that Elon displayed and we can all learn from is his ability to create a sense of urgency, which is what John Kotter would indicate is the first and foremost requirement to leading change.