Monday MGMT Minute: Engineer Better Performance With Elon Musk's 5-Step Process

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I have this strong belief that all leaders are organizational engineers.

It’s our job to create systems, or “factories,” that give the right people the right tools to take the right steps to produce outcomes they could not have created themselves.

This is why this clip about Elon’s 5-step engineering process resonates so deeply with me as a manager:

Let’s break down all five (six, the author skipped a key one) steps and how you can apply them to your team.

Make Your Requirements Less Dumb

Key insight: We are all wrong some of the time. “Your requirements are definitely dumb. It’s particularly dangerous if a smart person gives them to you because you might not question them enough.”

Try Very Hard to Delete Parts or Processes

Key insight: We are predisposed to add. Add a step. Add a rule. Add more people. High-performing teams edit ruthlessly. “If you’re not occasionally adding back in, you’re not deleting enough.”

Every Process Gets An Owner

Key Insight: Someone needs to be personally accountable for each process. Otherwise, you’ll end up with unnecessary constraints “created by an intern who left two years ago.” If someone won’t take ownership of it, it wasn’t necessary in the first place.

Simplify or Optimize

Key Insight: This is fourth, not first, for one simple reason: “Possibly the most common error of a smart engineer is to optimize something that should not exist.” We’ve been trained to answer the question asked, not question the asker.

Accelerate Cycle Time

Key insight: We can always go faster. But you need to get it right before stepping on the gas. “If you’re digging your own grave, don’t dig it faster. Stop digging your grave!”

Automate

Key insight: Automation is massively leveraging, but only when done last. Otherwise, you’re simply compounding the mistakes you missed in the first 5 steps. “I have made the mistake of going backward on all five steps. Many times.”

While most of us aren’t trying to land rockets on Mars, the most impactful leaders I work with apply these concepts intuitively:

• How can we focus on the right things?

• Does every focus have an owner?

• How can we make it simpler?

• How can we execute faster?

• How can tech help us?

Use the last couple of weeks of this year to set yourself up for next year.

Lead on,
Dave & Mar

PS - Our Q1 MGMT Accelerator is open and already filling up. Why not use your professional development budget from 2024 to invest in a better system for 2025?

Our next program starts on February 4th.