Elon has a distillation of lessons learned while building capacity at Tesla's factories. His algorithm challenges the status quo and proposes operating from first principles.It has 5 laws and a few corollaries.

Elon Musk's Algorithm

This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist.Make sure you don't automate or optimize a process that doesn't need to exist in the first place. Sure, you can make percentage gains by making something better... but why not save 100 percent of the time, effort, or cost involved by eliminating something that creates no value?

Step 3: Simplify and optimize

Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. "In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I Iater realised should have been deleted."In simple terms, the two major ways to increase productivity are :<ul><li>to speed up the rate of production (think increasing the miles per hour)  </li><li>to speed up the time it takes to switch from producing one widget to another.) </li></ul>

Step 4: Accelerate cycle time

That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont (Tesla factories) was that I began by trying to automate every step.We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out.

Step 5: Automate

<ul><li>All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For ex, software managers must spend at least 20% of their time coding. You don't need general who don't know how to use a sword. </li><li>Camradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other's work.</li><li>It's OK to be wrong. Just don't be confident & wrong.</li><li>Never ask your troops to do something you're not willing to do</li></ul>

Corollaries to Elon's Algorithm: Part 1

You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn't delete enough.Often we do things simply because we've always done them. Or because we think we need to. Or because it's our job, and therefore it must be important.

Step 2: Delete any part or process you can

Each requirement should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from "the legal department" or "the safety department." You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement.Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb.

Step 1: Question every requirement

<ul><li>Whenever there are problems to solve, don't just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers.</li><li>When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant</li><li>A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle.</li><li>The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation.</li></ul>

Corollaries to Elon's Algorithm: Part 2

Elon's framework for problem solving explains a lot of his success. 

From the author of Steve Jobs and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate story of the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter. When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist. His father’s impact on his psyche would linger. He developed into a tough yet vulnerable man-child, prone to abrupt Jekyll-and-Hyde mood swings, with an exceedingly high tolerance for risk, a craving for drama, an epic sense of mission, and a maniacal intensity that was callous and at times destructive. At the beginning of 2022—after a year marked by SpaceX launching thirty-one rockets into orbit, Tesla selling a million cars, and him becoming the richest man on earth—Musk spoke ruefully about his compulsion to stir up dramas. “I need to shift my mindset away from being in crisis mode, which it has been for about fourteen years now, or arguably most of my life,” he said. It was a wistful comment, not a New Year’s resolution. Even as he said it, he was secretly buying up shares of Twitter, the world’s ultimate playground. Over the years, whenever he was in a dark place, his mind went back to being bullied on the playground. Now he had the chance to own the playground. For two years, Isaacson shadowed Musk, attended his meetings, walked his factories with him, and spent hours interviewing him, his family, friends, coworkers, and adversaries. The result is the revealing inside story, filled with amazing tales of triumphs and turmoil, that addresses the question: are the demons that drive Musk also what it takes to drive innovation and progress?

teamwork

Teamwork

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Startups

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Books

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Product & Design

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Leadership & Management

Walter Isaacson, a professor of history at Tulane, has been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor of Time. He is the author of 'Leonardo da Vinci; The Innovators; Steve Jobs; Einstein: His Life and Universe; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life; and Kissinger: A Biography, and the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. Visit him at Isaacson.Tulane.edu and on Twitter at @WalterIsaacson

Step 2: Delete any part or process you can

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