Elon Musk’s 5-step “algorithm,” from the Starbase tour with Tim Dodd. The order matters.
- Make requirements less dumb. Every requirement should be tied to a name, not a department. “The specs were too dumb,” and they always are, no matter how smart the source.
- Delete the part or process. If you’re not adding back at least 10% of what you delete, you’re not deleting enough. Bias toward removal.
- Simplify or optimize. Only after deleting. The most common error is optimizing something that shouldn’t exist.
- Accelerate cycle time. Speed up what’s left, but only what’s left. Don’t speed up a process you should have deleted in step 2.
- Automate. Last, because if you automate before steps 1 through 4, you’re just automating waste.
His core point is that engineers (himself included) instinctively start at step 5 and work backwards, which is why he made the order explicit. He also adds two corollaries: all design choices should be questioned (including your own), and the person responsible for a requirement should sometimes be the one to delete it.
Source
Starbase Tour with Elon Musk, Part 1 (Everyday Astronaut, filmed July 30, 2021), at roughly the 13:30 mark, during the walk through the high bay when the conversation shifts from manufacturing into broader engineering philosophy. Musk had publicly referenced parts of the same idea before (notably a 2020 internal Tesla/SpaceX note about “the best part is no part”), but this tour is where he first articulated all five steps in order as a single named “algorithm,” which is why that clip became the canonical reference for it.