Tesla vet says that ‘reviewing real products’ — not mockups — is the key to staying innovative

GM’s EVs have been on a roll lately. After selling just the Chevy Bolt for years, a wave of new models — now up to 17 fully electrified vehicles — has pushed the automaker into second place in the U.S. 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 the Model 3, a crucial period of the company’s growth. One of the things he credits for Tesla’s success is how Elon Musk ran product meetings. 

“No slides was our first rule,” McNeil told the audience earlier this month at TC All Stage in Boston. “You have to be reviewing real product.”

Every week, senior leadership would sit down with product leaders to review their progress. The practice was inspired by an encounter Musk had with Steve Jobs, McNeil said. 

“There was this belief that I think is true: Steve Jobs didn’t have a ton of time or patience for Elon in the early days. And early in the early days, Elon would try to chase Steve down at events and parties in Silicon Valley for advice. And Steve didn’t like Elon, and so would often turn his back to him when he approached him. 

“But one night, Elon got lucky and said, ‘Steve, if you had one piece of advice for me as a young entrepreneur’ — he had just just done PayPal and was joining the team at Tesla — ‘what would that be?’ Steve said, ‘Elon, you’re now in the hardware business, but the hardware business is a lot like the software business. If you want to be successful in business, you have to get one thing right, and that is, you have to have a perfect product. And if the product is beautiful, it will sell itself.”

Musk took that to heart, McNeil said, and the concept of a perfect product became central to product development at Tesla.

“The thing we were looking for first of all was surprise and delight. Like, are we doing something that is going to just make somebody go wow or laugh or have fun? 

“Crazy example of that is the fart button,” McNeil said, referring to a software button labeled “Emissions Testing Mode” that would simulate flatulence through the car’s speakers. 

The company also prized minimalism, which on the software side meant keeping functions accessible 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 back the designer — the lead designer was always in the room — and then we would say, OK, Franz, now make 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 gets communicated when people are bringing their A game to the CEO every week. Because you’re not going to bring your B game to the CEO — especially that CEO, because he’s going to fire you,” he said.

“That keeps that company on a one-week cadence of innovation. Every week they’re making progress because of the product reviews.”

McNeil left Tesla in early 2018. In 2022, he was added to the board at GM. 

“One of the things I’m most proud of is Mary Barra, CEO, and Mark Reuss, president, [who oversee] a 275,000 person, $200 billion revenue company, are running product reviews every week where there’s no slides. You’ve got to see the real product [whether it’s] hardware, software. If it’s hardware, it’s in the room. You’re touching it. You’re feeling it,” he said.

“That stuff is so powerful. And it’s led to GMs introduction of 17 EVs, now the second best selling EVs in the country. Because they’re just on product, every week.”