Given my interests about manufacturing, Lean, strategy, leadership—and dealing with strong bosses with mental health issues—I couldn’t resist reading a promo copy of a book covering all of those. And, recommending it. Go, get the book, study it with your team. It’s that good.
Set up with an appointment by Meta’s Sheryl Sandberg, Jon McNeill met Elon Musk who said to him, “I have a problem with Tesla. I can’t get Model X doors to align.” Two hours later, Jon McNeill and Elon Musk were tackling the problem head-on and soon, Jon would join Elon as President of Global Sales, Marketing, Delivery & Service at Tesla (2015-2018).
McNeill, now CEO of DVx Ventures, who sits on boards at GM and Lululemon, says most companies are about to discover the same bottleneck Tesla hit: not enough skilled workers to execute complex processes. He explores this in his new book, THE ALGORITHM: The Hypergrowth Formula That Transformed Tesla, Lululemon, General Motors, and SpaceX (Portfolio; March 24, 2026). He details both the things he learned from Musk as well as the difficulties of working for someone with mental health issues.
The book is packed with stories showing (not telling) how leaders attack team problem solving with out-of-the-box thinking.
Try this on for size. At Tesla, the body shop required scores of robots and a team of robotics engineers to keep them synchronized. It was expensive, complex, and fragile. Jon’s team questioned whether the entire body shop could be eliminated (almost three football fields of warehouse space). The answer: casting. By reducing the chassis from 300 welded parts to 3 cast parts, Tesla simultaneously cut manufacturing costs 50% AND made the process more resilient (fewer dependencies, fewer failure points) by questioning requirements.
Gathering my thoughts, what more perfect time to publish this review than immediately following the Initial Public Offering of SpaceX (which includes xAI and X-Twitter). The trillion-dollar valuation also propels Elon Musk into the stratosphere of finance making him humanity’s first trillionaire.
Musk takes big risks on audacious goals. Enough pay off big to make up for the failures.
- The Algorithm? The five steps contain similarities to Lean and the Toyota Production System:
- Question requirements: Do we need this level of complexity?
- Delete steps: What can be eliminated before we relocate?
- Simplify: Can we redesign for fewer dependencies and lower skill requirements?
- Accelerate: What’s the constraint in a U.S. context? (Often: specialized labor)
- Automate last: Only after simplification should we consider technology (VERY IMPORTANT STEP TO NOT DO THIS FIRST!).
Here are a couple of relevant notes from the book:
Much of the genius in Musk’s companies comes from the legions of smart people empowered by the Algorithm. They’re chasing stretch goals with free license to question everything and innovate boldly.
The Algorithm features a set of best practices, yet one overarching idea infuses them all: Question the status quo.
