It doesn’t matter whether you are an expert or a novice, a leader of a large organization or an individual contributor, a generalist or subject matter expert, a stakeholder, participant or enabler in system or process change, we are all knee deep in it.

We are constantly reminded of the business imperative to speed up process cycle times, reduce cost, simplify and digitize.

But we fail to achieve our transformation and redesign aspirations 70% of the time.

Do we set the bar too high, or is there a better approach?

We know it is a harder road than it appears.

Elon Musk shared his observations from experience in process (re) design during a tour of the SpaceX Starbase facility in Texas recently.

Love him or loathe him, he does have the “getting hard things done” habit. An execution skill we can all benefit from honing.

You don’t have to be designing an electric car or a spaceship to benefit from the simplicity of his 5 step approach. 

1. Make the requirement less “dumb”
2. Try to eliminate part of the process
3. Simplify or optimize
4. Accelerate cycle time
5. Automate

I could elaborate on each, but watch Elon on the brief video below. 

What IS clear is that it is the sequence that is important and maybe this is where we so often go astray!

You can watch the 2 minute video of Elon explaining here . . . 

If you are more of a reader than a watcher you can read the summary here . . .

You could use those few minutes on many other things, but we all have to “sharpen the saw” from time to time . . 

Thanks for reading . . . . 

Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.

They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them,
glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.

Because they change things.

They push the human race forward.

While some may see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do.