Elon Musk has SpaceX building rockets at the rate a software company churns out code. It's insanely fast.

The key? Building with urgency. And everybody has to be on board. Here's how Elon makes that happen:

The mission according to Elon

"If we operate with extreme urgency, then we have a chance of making life multi-planetary. If we don't act with extreme urgency, that chance is probably zero. The rate of innovation is not going to be constant. It's either going to increase or slow down."

I've always been skeptical about Elon's grand narrative here.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge believer in the in the mission of SpaceX, but I didn't think it was possible to motivate people day-to-day with such lofty goals.

However, after seeing Everyday Astronaut's videos with Elon, I believe it. Employees are hugging Elon, saying they're going to get these things built and get it done.

The mission, it seems, has taken hold.

Elon has made this happen by baking this sense of urgency into the culture of the company by measuring all of their work against the ultimate goal: get to Mars.

Elon says, "The overarching optimization is 'what is the fastest time to a city on Mars?'" Anything that doesn't contribute to that goal is nixed.

But again, that's a hugely lofty goal. How does that apply to day-to-day work? Elon breaks it down into smaller goals, just like any good product manager: "What's the fastest time to a fully reusable rocket?"

Smaller still: "What's the fastest time to orbit?"

And so on.

A framework for speed

Elon encourages employees to constantly use this framework in their own work:

  • Is this helping us get to orbit with Starship in the fastest possible timeframe?

  • Is this helping us get to rapid reusability as quickly as possible?

By closely integrating these smaller (albeit still massive) milestones into the design and production processes, everyone is constantly reminded of the bigger goals.

Still, they could be actively working toward these goals at a slower pace. So where does the urgency fit in?

One of my most strongly-held beliefs is that people will live up to the expectations you set for them, and Elon reinforces that.

Elon expects speed above all else.

In Everyday Astronaut's video, Elon's team gives him progress updates at an incredible rate. You can't call it a meeting, it's too fast. It's more of an information download. The information bandwidth is high, and the way to do it is simple:

Here's what you need to know to be up to speed, and here are the things we need decisions on.

Beyond that, Elon expects the team to measure work in minutes and hours, not days or weeks. In other words, what can we get done today? What can we get done that gives us more information or furthers our goals in the next few hours.

This goes back to Elon's first-principles framework. His team is constantly thinking of things from the ground up, asking the simple question: "Can this be done faster?"

That level of expectation is contagious, it spreads throughout an organization. And it seems to have done so at SpaceX.

It's like inertia. It's immensely difficult to get started, but once it's moving, it's really hard to stop. This level of urgency isn't the right move at every organization, but in order to solve really hard problems, like launching rockets into space, it may be the best way to make progress toward the stars.