Challenge All Requirements

Reject requirements you can’t defend.

Dead policies scare people into submission. Established practices need an exorcism.

Are today’s requirements good ideas gone bad?

“Simplifiers are accelerators.” Jon McNeill

Slow Drag

Useless rules cause quiet failure. People follow steps that don’t matter. Teams protect processes that don’t serve.

Energy seeps out one pointless action at a time.

Challenge All Requirements:

#1. Assume Requirements are Wrong

Believe rules are flawed. It’s easy to justify rule-keeping. It’s courageous to delete “essential” requirements.

#2. Find the “Who”

 “It’s the system” isn’t an answer. Who mandated this? If no one can defend it, question it.

#3. Eliminate “One-Size-Fits-All”

Generic procedures signal lazy thinking. They trade precision for convenience. If it fits everyone, it likely serves no one well.

#4. Ignore “Industry Standards”

Mom said, “If your friends jump off a bridge, would you?” Excellence is doing things others don’t.

Pro Tip: Kill department thinking. The most dangerous answer you hear is, “It’s a legal requirement,” or “Finance needs it.”

Simplicity

Don’t be a curmudgeon when you challenge all requirements. Remove friction. Clear the path for your team.

Every unnecessary requirement taxes your team’s soul.

Before you optimize, decide if the task should exist at all.

5 Questions to Challenge All Requirements

1. “What problem does this solve?”
2. “What happens if we don’t do this?”
3. “Is this a rule, or just how we’ve always done it?”
4. “Who actually benefits from this?”
5. “Can we try removing this for 30 days?”

Stop being a rule-follower. Start being a simplifier.

Which process could you put on a 30-day trial-deletion?

Stop Solving the Wrong Problem

This post is based on, “The Algorithm: The Hypergrowth Formula that Transformed Tesla, Lululemon, General Motors and SpaceX,” by Jon McNeill former President of Tesla.