The value of Elon Musk five-step working method is not its novelty, but how it distils key engineering principles into actionable steps with a clear priority order.
Step one: question the requirement. Make it less stupid. Musk emphasises that most requirements you receive are flawed from the start. No matter whoproposes the requirement, even smart people can be wrong. People tend to relax their scrutiny when a requirement comes from an authority or a clever person. The first step is to maintain independent judgement.
Step two: delete unnecessary parts. After questioning the requirement, examine the entire process and identify which steps can be removed. Musk principle is: if you do not add it back later, it was never needed. This works because most systems suffer from feature creep. Over time, more and more unnecessary features are added.
Step three: optimise. Only after the first two steps should you enter the optimisation phase. Muskemphasises that the order cannot be wrong. Optimising in the wrong direction only makes the error more efficient.
Step four: accelerate. Once you have confirmed the direction and process are correct, accelerate the iteration. This corresponds to the core principle of agile development: do it right first, then do it fast.
Step five: automate. The final step is to replace human effort with machines or systems. Musk observes that many people jump straight to automation, only to automate an inefficient process that should never have existed in the first place.
The value of these five steps is that they provide a clear decision priority. The most common mistake made by companies and individuals is getting the priority wrong: accelerate first, optimise later, and never question the requirement.