November 11, 2025
Elon Musk has a five-step approach to process improvement. He says that most organisations get it the wrong way round. They look to optimise first. Musk says don’t. First ask whether the process should exist at all.
His sequence (and the order matters):
1️⃣ Make the requirements less dumb
- Challenge every requirement. Especially the ones from smart people.
2️⃣ Delete any step you can
- Subtraction comes before optimisation.
3️⃣ Only then simplify
- Don’t polish a process that shouldn’t exist.
4️⃣ Accelerate a good process, not a bad one
5️⃣ Automate last
- Automation should reward clarity, not cement chaos.
Underneath it all is First Principles Thinking: strip everything back, challenge assumptions, rebuild only what adds value.
Most organisations try to automate the mess.
Musk reminds us to remove the mess first.
In my own work, when teams pause, question and delete before improving, something shifts: clarity emerges, waste disappears and people feel freed rather than constrained.
Sometimes the smartest move isn’t to improve the process.
It’s to remove it.