When I started at Tesla, I assumed that Elon and I looked at work processes from much the same perspective. This was true, but only to a degree. The company had gone from a start-up to a large manufacturer without really defining how to solve problems and scale. Instead, incredible talent and creativity in the moment drove many breakthroughs. But as Tesla grew, the whole team began to define an entire operating system that emphasized speed and simplicity. The objective: exponential growth. Elon called this formula “the Algorithm.”
To survive in the twenty-first century, older companies need growth and efficiency just as much as anyone. The steps of the Algorithm can lead to dramatic improvement in speed and quality, even in the most venerable enterprises.
Consider General Motors. The century-old behemoth has a reputation, gained over the decades, for running a rigid hierarchy and resisting change. In the 1980s the entrepreneur Ross Perot bought a piece of the company, joined the board, and vowed to modernize it. He later lamented that modernizing GM was “like teaching an elephant to tap dance.”
In 2022 I joined the board of GM. But years before I arrived, CEO Mary Barra was already teaching that elephant to dance. She was simplifying, questioning requirements, and setting stretch goals. In style, the contrast between Mary and Elon could hardly be starker. Yet in many ways, their approaches are similar.
Her crash project to build an electric truck is a shining example. The genesis was in March of 2018. That was when Mary and her team gathered to launch a new EV. The company had been producing an economy EV, the Chevy Volt, soon to be discontinued. But in 2018, they wanted a new vehicle that would change both the narrative and expectations surrounding the auto giant.
They decided to electrify the vehicle most widely as- sociated with gas-guzzling: the Hummer. This wasn’t a move to appeal to the traditional “green” market—the people who drove hybrids, composted their vegetables, and installed solar panels. No, this would target customers who focused on power and performance, people who in 2018 did not likely consider themselves in the market for an EV. But maybe they would, Mary thought, once they felt the neck-snapping acceleration of an electric Hummer.
The concept was bold. And the execution would resemble Tesla’s in many ways. The parallels to the Algorithm are hard to miss. It started off with a bold vision and a crazy-fast target. By the auto industry’s traditional rhythm, it takes four years to design, develop, and produce a brand-new model. The electric Hummer, she said, was to be in production in half that time.
She picked a young, brash and talented engineer, Josh Tavel, to lead the project. He had full autonomy to pick his own team. They’d develop their own process, free from the established rules and procedures within the company. “We can’t sit back and watch cool stuff be done,” he said. “We’ve gotta be the ones making everybody else uncomfortable.”
Tavel started small, with just a handful of colleagues. They were virtually free of GM’s hierarchy and had streamlined approvals. Still, as they began work, they confronted a slew of traditions and best practices. Some of those best practices, Tavel later said, “needed to be there, because that’s how we make safe vehicles. But you also have to break those norms, and stop doing things the same way. Just asking the question ‘why?’ is a big deal.”
They raced along, reducing steps. The key for both speed and quality was to simplify. Tavel and his team understood that only with a pared-down process at its core could they stay on schedule while also adding a slew of new features.
Working through the pandemic, the small team was free to innovate, with minimal institutional pushback. They fixed cameras on the truck’s underbelly to give drivers a close look at the terrain. They added a power-sharing feature that enabled Hummer drivers to deliver charges
to other EVs. Their Extract Mode let drivers raise the truck an additional six inches for rocky terrain. And “CrabWalk” enabled drivers to steer by moving both front and rear tires so that the truck could escape sticky situations by moving diagonally.
The first Hummer EV rolled off the line on December 3, 2020, barely nineteen months after the launch of the project. It was important, of course, to get the massive vehicle on the market. But even more vital were the takeaways for GM. Josh Tavel’s team had pioneered a new and much faster mode of vehicle development. It wasn’t called the Algorithm, of course. But it might as well have been. Why? Because Josh started by questioning every requirement. He questioned the requirements of the vehicle itself. Then he broadened the questions to the requirements of supply chain, of manufacturing, and of marketing.
From there, he and the team deleted unnecessary steps. With that simplified process, they optimized and sped up cycle time to deliver a groundbreaking vehicle in record time.
A key part of the success in doing this in established companies is how Mary set up the team. There was one decision-maker, Josh. And he reported directly to the president of GM, Mark Reuss. Mark continuously cleared blockers for Josh and the Hummer team, enabling their ability to break from tradition and norms.
I have not seen a successful initiative to innovate at speed without a small team reporting to a top executive who will clear roadblocks. Mary’s organizational architecture, combined with an Algorithm-like approach, was key to success. And it can be replicated in your organization, too.
The Hummer EV was what is known in the industry as a “halo car.” When a car company is plunging into a new era, it creates a car that has all the bells and whistles, and produces it in relatively small numbers. Its purpose is to signal what’s ahead, both to industry watchers and car buyers. For decades, Chevrolet’s halo car has been the Corvette, which showcases innovations like dual-clutch transmission and magnetic selective-ride control, a feature that reads the road and adjusts shock absorbers. The Hummer EV boasted huge battery range and all sorts of exotic features, such as CrabWalk.
But more important than its halo to the outside world, the importance of the Hummer EV is the manufacturing transformation that it unlocked within GM. It was a dramatic injection of speed, specifically speed of product development. Before the Hummer EV, new models took two to four years to design and introduce to production. Since its debut, the norm is now twelve to fourteen months.
This has enabled GM to introduce more new models than its competitors, rapidly refreshing its product lineup across the board. A car company’s ability to quickly introduce new models gives it a competitive advantage. GM gets to market faster, gains one to two years of additional cash flow from those models, and gains market share at the same time. It’s a flywheel of speed, one that is urgent in the hypercompetitive global auto market.
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