Elon Musk often talks about the necessity of deleting steps. This is one of those ideas that appears simple and straightforward when you hear it, but putting it into practice is difficult and you don't often see it within organizations. So, what does this look like for a more "normal" business with jobs that are not literally rocket science to be deleting steps?
Deleting steps looks like discontinuing processes. The reason you discontinue something is that you've discovered that that process is not the most effective use of the company's resources. This hits at a core challenge: sometimes, you have to delete a process that is somewhat effective (many things have some degree of effectiveness) to free up time to work on the few things that are the most effective or run an experiment to evaluate if something else could be more effective.
There are many examples of this. Here are a few:
Your business might be making cold calls and seeing some results, but you believe there's a more effective way to get better returns. Delete the process.
You may have tried entering a new market, but it hasn’t performed as well as expected. If you've given it your best shot (which you should have), it's time to delete that process.
Perhaps you’ve added a new section to a sales presentation that isn't resonating with the audience. Delete it.
To delete something, you have to be willing to admit that it didn't work as well as you hoped. You have to be ready to accept that whatever you implemented failed. And you have to have systems in place to help you recognize that the implementation has failed.
Deleting the step is the practical action that shows that you have actually learned from the failure or the mistake.