JUST IN:In 15 Minutes in the Middle of the Night, Elon Musk and Tesla Just Taught a Key Leadership Lesson (Whether They Meant to Or Not)…see more

JUST IN:In 15 Minutes in the Middle of the Night, Elon Musk and Tesla Just Taught a Key Leadership Lesson (Whether They Meant to Or Not)…see more

Let’s catch up on the last few days of drama with Elon Musk and Tesla, and then move quickly to the crucial lesson you should take to heart in whatever business you run:

First, the background. Unless you’ve been lucky enough to have been on a digital detox for the past six months, you know that Musk has devoted most of his efforts in 2025 to his “Department of Government Efficiency” effort in the Trump administration, as opposed to Tesla.
Last month, Tesla reported very disappointing earnings, and Musk said that he planned to scale back on DOGE – to one or two days a week. Was that enough for Tesla? Maybe not, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reported that Tesla’s board had started the process of finding a replacement.
Not true! exclaimed Tesla and Musk on X, in middle-of-the-night tweets posted 15 minutes apart (at 1:23 a.m. and 1:30 a.m. ET Thursday). Musk called the report “DELIBERATELY FALSE” and Robyn Denhol, Tesla’s board chair wrote: “The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk and the Board is highly confident in his ability to continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead.”
‘I’ve got too much else to think about now’
Let’s take Tesla and Musk at their word and assume there’s no current plan to look for a replacement. But does that mean there’s really no succession plan at Tesla?

What would happen if Tesla really did have to replace Musk in a hurry? This isn’t exactly the first time that people have asked this.

You can go all the way back to Musk’s PayPal days, when he once went on vacation, contracted malaria, and spent 10 days in intensive care. As a result, he reportedly had to take out a $100 million life insurance policy benefiting PayPal, which gives you a nice estimate of what people thought the value of the “key person risk” of having Musk in a leadership position was back then.

Maybe he learned his lesson? But there’s the meeting he had in 2022 with a group of estate-planning experts who wanted him to focus on his massive wealth. “I’ve got too much else to think about now,” Musk declared before ending the meeting, according to Walter Isaacson’s 2023 biography, “Elon Musk.”

What’s more, in 2023, an activist Tesla shareholder tried to force issue at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting, but the board resisted and efforts to put succession planning on the record failed.

Musk also announced in a Trump cabinet meeting earlier this year that he’s been getting death threats since working on the DOGE effort.

‘Key Elon Risk’
On the one hand, if Tesla doesn’t want to acknowledge searching for a possible Musk replacement, and if Musk wants to step aside unofficially from the company sometimes while running other companies or heading up a massive government effort, that’s their business.

Tesla is a public company. “Key Elon risk” is there for anyone to see, and people can choose to invest, or buy Tesla products, or work for the company or do business with it accordingly.

On the other hand, Tesla is roughly the eighth largest company in America, worth just under $900 billion as of Friday evening, with billions upon billions of retail investors’ and pension funds’ wealth invested. That’s a lot of risk for a lot of people, even if many of them might not realize it.

I hope even people who don’t like Musk or who oppose his work at DOGE or elsewhere don’t wish him harm or wish for his demise.

But, if PayPal thought the “key person risk” for Elon was worth $100 million years ago, how could we even put a dollar amount on it at Tesla today?

Your company’s own worst enemy
I’m writing this on the eve of the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting, as Warren Buffett is taking the next step in one of the more graceful succession planning strategies we’ve seen, handing the baton deliberately to his heir as CEO, Greg Abel.

Comparisons spring to mind as well of how deftly Steve Jobs managed succession at Apple.

I’ve asked Musk and Tesla on X if there’s any succession plan at Tesla, but have had no reply.

However, this whole episode over the last few months offers a vivid illustration of why you should consider key person risk and a succession plan in whatever business you run.

I sincerely hope you’re not running around with a platoon of armed bodyguards the way Musk does, talking about threats on your life, and building a polarizing persona that leads people to say you’ve become your company’s own worst enemy.

But I also hope you can look at the never-ending chaos at Tesla, and have the presence of mind to say: Let’s try to avoid that.

The solution and the lesson?

You owe it to the people counting on you to think through what will happen if you’re no longer able to continue.

Figure it out, work it through—and let the people who care about you and your business know the plan.

Preferably not via a couple of middle-of-the-night tweets.