Today, we're going to talk about how do we create next level leaders as a team of leaders.
And to do that, we're going to look at one company specifically.
You know, when one company outperforms their whole industry by 10 or 20X, it's worth looking
at them and saying, what is it that they're doing and can we use that in our small business?
And that's exactly the point of today's training.
When we look at SpaceX, we have a remarkable track record.
In 2024, SpaceX launched over 400 rockets, as opposed to China did 68, Russia did 17,
Europe did just 3 and India 5.
So how is that possible that there is a company that can do so many more launches than anyone
else, at least 5X more?
Not only that, but they've done them for a fraction of the price.
You know, back in NASA days, things would cost literally billions of dollars to create
launches.
And the reason was, they were one-off.
It would be like flying an airplane and at the end of the single flight, you have to
destroy the airplane, rebuild a new airplane so you can do a return flight.
But what if you made that reusable?
This thinking has dramatically reduced the cost at SpaceX.
So their costs are between 30 and 50 million dollars per launch, as opposed to 500 million
or more, in some cases even billions.
So SpaceX has redefined their category.
And that means you can redefine your category if we apply the same kind of thinking that
they use.
So what they refer to at SpaceX is a thing called the algorithm, or making things less
dumb.
This is a 5-step algorithm that helps you take your business to the next level.
What if you could 10X what you're doing?
What if you could become the industry leader and do it at an incredibly cost-effective
manner?
So let's talk about those 5 steps.
And before we get into these 5 steps, I want to say some really important things.
You know, most improvements, most productivity trainings and so on, focus on steps 3, 4,
and 5.
But actually, the biggest gains come from step 1 and 2.
So here are the 5 steps.
Step number 1, making requirements less dumb, questioning every requirement, especially
if it comes from smart people.
Number 2, delete parts or delete elements of the process.
And the way they gauge whether they've deleted enough is they've deleted so much they have
to put 10% back.
Oop, that was a bit too far.
If you're not putting the 10% back, you're not deleting enough.
Then we get to step 3, to simplify or optimize.
Most people start here, but actually, we only want to optimize and simplify once we've
done step 1 and 2.
Question the requirements, delete the parts or processes that we can, and then start simplifying.
Once we start simplifying, then it's time to accelerate.
How can we speed this up and make this go faster?
And finally, automation.
Then we want to automate.
So we want to reduce requirements, delete unnecessary steps, simplify, accelerate, automate.
In that order.
There's always the natural tendency, and this was the same at SpaceX as it was in every
other company.
It's always the thing that we optimize something that shouldn't even exist.
Now think for a second.
How many times in your organization have you spent time building up a program only later
to delete the whole thing?
So here's the idea.
What if before we put this mount, think of a pyramid of investment, time, effort, team
focus, marketing, positioning, all that goes into launching something.
What if we clip it at the top and we just drop most of those costs out?
This is actually a little more difficult to do than it first seems.
And this is why it takes next level leaders.
To help you understand it in our context, I want to tell you a quick story about how
it worked.
You know, we had a program and I thought it would be really great to sort of have a premium
version of our monthly subscription program.
So I spent several hours as the CEO writing out what that program should be because I
knew I had a team time coming up and we had one hour to think through this process.
But I knew well enough for my team we had...
We've just gone through this training. We've just gone through this 5-step training as
a team and so I wanted to leave space for this training to be effective. So, in my mind
I was thinking, well let me not solve the whole thing and present it as, well, that's
what the leader wants. Instead, I put it in such a way that they could really question
the requirements. You know, questioning the requirements is actually quite difficult because
there is definitely something dumb in every requirement. The job is to make it less dumb.
It literally does not matter whether it comes from the leader or the smartest person on
the planet. There is something dumb in the list of requirements. Oh, we need to build
this. Here are the requirements. And it's particularly dangerous when they come from
very smart people who also have a title. Well, they're, you know, the head of research and
development or it's the CEO or whatever it is. Whenever it's like that or we feel like
we don't have the permission to question requirements. So, this first step as a leader
is to give your team permission to call things dumb.
This sounds like quite an interesting process and it was for me because in our story I left
space for this. Well, I present this whole idea and the person, our manager who manages
our customer experience and customer success department, she listens to this thing and
she says, this whole idea is dumb. The big idea can work but your requirements you put
in, that won't work, that won't work, that's dumb. And everyone started to laugh. She's
calling the CEO dumb. She's not calling me dumb. She was calling my idea, my requirements
dumb. This is really important. The team has permission to think in this way. Look, everybody
is wrong. It doesn't matter their title, how smart they are, how many years they've
been doing this. I've been doing this for 30 years or whatever. That just might mean
you're entrenched in something. So, no matter who you are, no matter how much experience
you have, there's something wrong all of the time in what you do. All designs are wrong.
It's just a matter of how wrong. So, I love that, you know, when you look at what SpaceX
is doing and how SpaceX functions, they've created the space to call things dumb. To
start with the assumption that there's something dumb in you, if not a lot of it. Well, in
our story, after she called, you know, most of my requirements dumb, she proceeded to
lay out a new set of requirements, several adjustments and tweaks and actually that became
our new product. The team, at the end, made a few tweaks, made a few, you know, elements
and then we went to step 2. What part of this can we delete? Well, we can delete that, that's
too complex, that's confusing. Let's delete, delete, delete. And here's the thing, if parts
aren't being deleted to such an extent that you have to put a piece of it back, that means
you're just not deleting enough. Well, once we finished the deletion process, now we had
a simple, clear product I thought was just amazing. It was so much better than the thing
that I'd proposed. And I thought it was pretty smart going in. In fact, I rather liked my
proposal, that's why I proposed it. But leaving space for the team to really call things dumb
and challenge those requirements and then go to step 2 and delete as much of it as we
can, even having to put a bit back, therein lies where all the bang for the buck is. From
then on, we have a lot of trainings that help you with steps 3, 4 and 5. Now, step 3 and
4, let's go to step 3, to simplify or optimize. Well, from that point, once we launched this
premium subscription service, then we were, you know, we sat down and thought for a minute
and said, before we get to accelerate or automate, a lot of times we automate things
too early. And if you automate things too early, it's because you haven't simplified
them enough. So, we've called things dumb, challenged all the requirements, deleted as
much as we can, now we really simplify it down. And so the reason this is step 3 and
not step 1 is because the most common error most smart people make is to optimize something
that should not exist. So, you have to ask the question, if this thing should even exist?
That's why we went through step 1 and 2. Well, now that we've gone through that, you know,
we want to make sure that we have really thought through what's the simplest version of this
that could exist. And if we can make the simplest version of this, then it's a lot easier to
optimize. And when you're optimizing it, sometimes you're simply changing it because it, it
easier for you to deliver,
easier for your customers to understand.
Now that we've done step three, we can go to step four.
So step four starts with a new assumption.
The new assumption in step four is
we're moving too slowly.
We need to go faster.
So how do we go faster now that we have a simplified,
scaled down, optimized product?
How can we really make this go faster?
Notice this is step four, not step one, two, or three.
You know, if you're digging a grave,
you don't want to be digging faster.
That's why step one through three exists,
to stop you just digging your grave quicker.
So that's what we want to do.
How do we make this go faster?
How do we get better market responses?
How do we get better customer support?
How do we make this work quicker?
How do we get payments faster?
Whatever the make it go faster thing is.
And finally, once we've learned
from these first four steps,
we are now in a position to start to automate.
It is the final step.
It's not the mid-step, it's the final step.
And especially when we are using AI tools,
the temptation is try to automate
before you've done these other steps.
It's a blind spot.
You know, just because you can automate it
doesn't mean you should.
Look, we've all personally made the mistakes
on going backwards on these steps.
Here's the thing, we could automate it.
Oh, we could make it go faster.
That's amazing.
Oh, hang on a second.
That's quite complex.
Let's simplify.
Hang on a second.
Why do we even have this?
Let's delete this piece.
And then we go all the back.
Why are we building this in the first place?
Literally go through the process backwards.
Well, you don't need to do that.
So making things less dumb is a five-step process.
And let's make them really simple with five words.
Reduce, calling things dumb, reducing the requirements.
Delete as much as possible.
Simplify, and then make it optimize the product.
Accelerate it, go faster.
And automate it, step five.
So in the worksheets, we'll literally go through that.
I'd love you to think through a project
you're doing right now and do this in order.
You know, as leaders, we need to create space
for making things less dumb.
So I wanna end this with a very recent story
that's literally happening at the time of this recording.
You know, as our organization has grown
and it's ended up with different divisions,
we've spent a lot of time trying to simplify.
And it's always, it's amazing how we wanna make
step three, step one.
Again, the biggest bang for the buck here,
the biggest thing that moves the needle is step one and two.
So we hit the pause button,
and we literally went through,
what's the requirement for this?
Let's start with the assumption
that there's definitely something dumb about this,
that there's things that are wrong,
and let's make it less wrong.
That makes you question the real purpose
of why do we even do this product?
Why do we even offer it in this way?
Why do we use these words
or these marketing processes or whatever?
Then we started to delete.
When we deleted, it was painful.
It was like losing something precious.
But look, we had to delete until,
oh, well, a little too far, we added something back.
I wanna encourage you to do that.
Start off, make the requirements less dumb.
Start with the assumption
that what you're doing is wrong in some way,
that the requirements are wrong or dumb in some way.
Second, try to delete as much of the process
or parts of the product or the offering,
whatever it is, as much as you can
until you have to put something back.
Three, simplify.
Start with a basic question, not just should this exist,
you've already done that in step one and two,
but just get into how can we make this
as simple as possible so people can follow it,
so people can understand it.
Four, now's the time to go faster.
We start with the assumption we're moving too slowly.
How do we make it go faster?
And once we've done that for a while
and we've got our hands around what it means to accelerate,
now we've learned enough to automate enough.
If you haven't learned enough, you cannot automate enough.
Jumping straight into automation
just because you have AI tools that can do that
is a serious mistake.
So, final step is automation.
Enjoy doing this.
As we've done this very recently,
you can do this for your personal life
and for your professional life.
I hope you found that useful.