Whatever your thoughts on Elon Musk’s politics, his management philosophy — lean, fast-moving, unconventional — is especially apropos in the age of AI.
That’s why Jon McNeill’s new book, The Algorithm, is the most important business book of the year. And the first-ever written by one of Musk’s direct reports. If you strip away all the noise that accompanies working for Musk, you’re left with a management philosophy that functions more like an innovative and ambitious company’s operating system, writes McNeill, who was president of Tesla during its most transformational period, 2015 to 2018.
McNeill outlines an algorithm that comes down to a few simple steps: “Question every requirement, delete every possible step in the process, simplify and optimize, accelerate cycle time, automate.” After honing it at Tesla, McNeill went on to apply this approach — essentially the opposite of the lean principles that made Toyota the darling of business school case studies for decades — at the other companies he went to, including Lululemon and General Motors, where he’s a board member.
“You don’t have to be Elon to do this,” McNeill says.
