Eliminating needless effort is vital but hard
Case study: The fiberglass mat that almost killed an auto company
Elon Musk slept on a factory floor to solve a problem.
The Tesla production line was crawling. A robot was trying to glue fiberglass mats to battery packs, and it was frustratingly slow.
Teams worked overtime optimizing the robot. They sped up the glue application, refined the attachment process, squeezed out marginal improvements.
Still too slow.
Finally, Musk asked the question that changed everything:
“Why are we putting fiberglass mats on batteries at all?”
The runaround
The battery team said: “Noise reduction. Talk to the noise and vibration team.”
The noise team said: “No noise issue. It’s for heat protection if the battery catches fire.”
Back to the battery team: “There’s no fire risk. That’s obsolete. It’s definitely a noise issue.”
They were wrong.
After testing, they discovered the mats weren’t needed, so they eliminated the part entirely.
No more production delays.
The bigger lesson
This reveals something crucial about building efficient systems—whether manufacturing cars or running a law practice.
Before you optimize, question the requirements.
Most lawyers do the opposite. They try to optimize unnecessary processes.
Creating elaborate SOPs for tasks that shouldn’t exist
Tracking metrics that don’t matter
Perfecting intake forms for clients they shouldn’t take
The Musk approach
From Jorgenson’s new book, here’s Musk’s methodical approach:
1. Question requirements: Track down why each requirement is deemed necessary. Ask the most responsible person: “Is this (still) necessary?”
2. Delete unnecessary parts: Once you’ve eliminated bogus requirements, remove as many workflow steps as possible.
3. Optimize what remains: Only then do you make the necessary parts work better.
4. Scale efficiently: Finally, consider cost-benefits and economies of scale.
Most people start with step 3, which is why they get stuck.
Why this is important for lawyers
Your practice is full of fiberglass mats—tasks everyone assumes are necessary but aren’t.
The lawyer who understands the whole system and makes smart trade-offs? That’s your most dangerous competition.
You need to become a sensible generalist: someone who can understand each specific element enough to eliminate what doesn’t matter.
Because the best systems aren’t the most sophisticated.
They’re the simplest ones that actually work.
;-)
Ernie
P.S. Want to see how other lawyers are eliminating their “fiberglass mats”? Check out my Inner Circle where we discuss streamlining practice operations.