Some people might call this unconventional or “outside of the box” thinking. Being radically different. Instead of optimizing an existing part or process, ask the question, “do we even need the part?”
This is Lean thinking
Actually, I would just call this Lean. I spent several years focused on supply chain, optimization, performance improvement – basically tightening up broken processes. This is the bread-and-butter of consultants. Fixing things.
For me, the breakthrough came when learning about critical to quality (CTQ) thinking.
Lean is beautiful
It asks all the right questions. What is critical to quality (CTQ) that really matters to the paying customer? What is superfluous or “nice to have?” What is core to the function of the product, process, or experience? If we took it away, would anyone care or notice? Have we asked the question Why-Why-Why-Why-Why 5 times?
Job to be done?
Clayton Christensen asked it differently, but just as elegantly. What is the job you want the product to do for you?
When we buy a smoothie or shake on a morning commute, what are buying? Companionship in a “last until I get to the office” beverage. When you buy a Supreme cap for $60+ you are buying a name, a story, and a “prize”.
Tour of Starbase; Elon musk interview
I’ve watched dozens of Musk interviews and Tesla investor relations presentations, but nothing about Space X. So it was fascinating doom-scroll on YouTube, when I saw Elon Musk walking a YouTube influencer through Space X and Starbase.
The interviewer, Tim Dodd (Everyday Astronaut), does incredible work. Real craftsmanship here. 1.6M subscribers.
The two of them walk around and talk rockets for hours – which I find both a) impressive b) largely unintelligible. However, it really caught my attention when Elon Musk started talking about Lean.
5 Step engineering philosophy
The goal of creating a fully reusable rocket requires dramatically different thinking. So Musk mentions these steps:
- Make requirements less dumb
- Delete
- Simplify
- Accelerate
- Automate
I can only imagine he applies this level of rigor at Tesla, Neuralink, and X.
1. Make the requirements less dumb
I love this. Yes, a lot of existing rules, standards, assumptions are dumb. As Musk notes, “Everyone’s wrong. No matter who you are, everyone is wrong some of the time.” It’s completely possible that some requirement (however logical at one time) is not relevant anymore. Musk warns that getting requirements from very intelligent people is particularly dangerous, because you might just accept it as gospel without asking tough questions.
Musk requires that all requirements are questioned and stress-tested. Do we really need that? Why?
This is very difficult to do:
Very few organizational cultures have the mission-driven focus, or open-mindedness to openly question convention. Most organization as successful precisely because they adhere to tradition, norms, and precedents. Don’t rock the boat.
Accountability is too diffuse:
Too often, a department or a group of people or “they” make a requirement. To cut through the confusion, Musk requires that every requirement have a specific person’s name (extreme ownership) on the requirement. This prevents that common situation where “everyone has a criticism, but no one wants to own it.”
2. Delete
This is so refreshing because we so rarely do this. Companies add-on products, offices, customers, employees, processes, exceptions, committees, task-forces, and meetings. . . until it becomes bloat. Then it is layoffs, restructuring, re-engineering, cost-reduction, cost takeout, zero-based budgeting, “cutting the fat.”
Why not start at step #1. . . what is the requirements? No really, what is truly critical? How does the customer define quality? What is the customer willing to pay for? What other alternatives do we have for customer self-service, or less periodic update, or even a public Tableau dashboard? Can we not solve this with a simple “patient in room” door flag?
Strategy is saying no to things that are less important, non-critical, or dilutive to winning. If it’s not needed, take it out. This should be gospel. How often do we optimize something that is not needed?
- Diligently packing up, moving, storing, and organizing “stuff” you don’t use
- Patiently editing, formatting, printing, and mailing information customers could download themselves
Musk remarks, “If you are not occasionally adding things back in, then you are not deleting enough because the bias tends to be ‘let’s add this process or part in case we need it.” Basically, you haven’t reach the edge / limit of what should be removed, until you’ve – oops, gone too far – and need to add it back.
Now, clearly there are needs to “buffer stock” and “redundancies” and back up supplies. Of course, we need to be smart and judicious in how cavalier we can get with this zero-based way to thinking. . . then again, they are doing this with space rockets, which have some demanding and rigid tolerances. Re-entry temperature of the heat shield = 1,600 degree Cent.
3. Optimize
This is part that we are accustomed to. Tweaking, improving, fixing what is already there. In fact, MBAs and consultants are really good at this part. The problem is that we may be improving something that should have already been deleted.
Musk gives a great example of the Tesla team’s failure to do this. . . they did all the steps backwards. . .
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all – Peter Drucker
4. Accelerate
Yes. The process in necessary (see steps #1, #2) and has been tightened (see step #3). No we go faster. We know what needs to be done. We know how to do it. Now do it well, at high quality (think: Six Sigma) and crank, crank, crank.
5. Automate
Yes. Let’s have the machine do this. Let this flow with no human interference. This reminds me of a consulting adage I remember from 2006. Don’t use technology to automate a broken process. You will just die faster.
Watch video from 13:32 – 28:00
Start at 13:32 for the discussion on LEAN. It’s worth listening for 25 minutes until 28:00. You will get a better sense of these 5 steps and Elon Musk’s intellect, ambition, and attention to detail. He knows his stuff and also is clearly different.
The best part is no part
I absolutely love this, and yet, I know that I do a TON of things in my teaching and business which are no value add. I can only imagine that 30% of my time is metaphorically optimizing something “dumb”.
Reminder to myself: a) what’s the requirement? really. b) can we delete it? when is that last time I added back something because I “deleted too much.”
What’s the ambition?
Perhaps a more “meta” point is . . . the intensity of lean varies according to the ambition of the mission. If we are looking for a 5% improvement, we don’t need to question everything and write down the names of people next to requirements. If we are looking to make humans an interplanetary species, or re-orient the world’s energy away from hydrocarbons, then some “out of the box” lean may be the only way to get there.