All 25 tactics
01 The Algorithm

Question Every Requirement

Never accept a requirement blindly — trace every rule back to a person, then challenge it.

When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.

Musk’s core philosophy: never accept “requirements” blindly. In the biography, he insists every rule must trace back to a person — even if it’s him — and be challenged. This stems from first-principles thinking: breaking problems down to their fundamentals.

SpaceX. Musk questioned NASA’s rocket cost norms, leading to the “idiot index” (the ratio of raw-material cost to final product). The result: the internal cost of a Falcon 9 flight dropped from roughly $60M for a new-build rocket to ~$15M for a reused one (Musk’s own figure).

Tesla. He grilled suppliers on battery specs, slashing Model 3 production costs by 30% by challenging industry assumptions about what was possible.

Apply it. Audit every process — e.g. why use expensive software? Challenge it weekly to cut waste by 20–50%.