Musk and Gambini - Simple Truth for Greater Efficiency

Elon Musk's reputation for efficiency has him taking on bloat in the government. Leaders can use Musk's techniques to make their organization more efficient.

How does he do it? He uses the formula used in a thirty-year-old movie: My Cousin Vinny.

1. Recognize Laws of Physics and other simple truths
2. Note that mountains of importance only appear mountainous from a certain point of view
3. Point out the indefensible
4. The mountain crumbles

In this classic comedy, two New Yorkers accused of murder are thoroughly impressed by DA Trotter’s (Lane Smith), performance at the preliminary hearing. He has three eyewitnesses. The Sherriff has a confession that makes it seem that Bill, played by Ralph Macchio (Karate Kid, Cobra Kai), with his friend Stan (Mitchell Whitfield), shot the clerk at the Sack o’ Suds and drove away. ?

They are unimpressed by Bill’s cousin, rookie attorney Vincent LaGuardia Gambini (Joe Pesci). Vinny is on his first case, and he’s done nothing but tick off the judge (Fred Gwynne). The defendants, facing the death penalty in rural Alabama want to dump Vinny for the court-appointed attorney.

Then Vinny explains the simple truth.

They are innocent. This was revealed to the audience in the opening scene.

Elon leans heavily on physics and simple truths. His cars put friction to work to lower their power consumption. He’s calculated that solar is the ultimate power source for humanity, but we can’t abandon fossil fuels -yet. The math doesn’t work. His attacks on inefficiency are glaringly simple because they rely on simple truths:

• People who don’t show up for work, and haven’t written a line of code in two years can’t be critical to any software company.
• To get better, constantly think about how you could be doing things better and question yourself.
• All big government is bloated.

Wasteful and inefficient organizations build an illusion of necessity.

Screenwriter Bill Lauder's brilliant scene on illusion:

Cousin Vinny explains,

“He has to build a case. Building a case is like building a house, and each piece of evidence is another building block. He wants to make a brick bunker with serious solid-looking bricks like these….”

He pulls out a playing card deck and explains, “He’ll show you how the bricks have straight sides, he’ll show you they got the right shape, and he’ll show it to you in a special way, so it appears to have everything."?

"But there is one thing he won’t show you. When you look at the bricks from a different angle, they’re as thin as this playing card. His whole case will be an illusion. It has to be ‘cause you’re innocent”

Musk explains his approach, borrowed from physicist Nicola Tesla,

“You have to build up the reasoning from the ground up—“from the first principles” is the phrase that’s used in physics. You look at the fundamentals and construct your reasoning from that, and then you see if you have a conclusion that works or doesn’t work, and it may or may not be different from what people have done in the past.

In science, this means starting with what evidence shows us to be true.”

Then you expose the indefensible. Gambini showed a witnesses had poor vision or flawed timing. Sure the tires matched the getaway car, but the tire marks never could, because…the boys were innocent. After some drama, the case falls apart like a house of cards.

The same thing happened at Twitter. After a few conversations starting with, “Tell me what you do here”, it became clear; the vast majority of the employees were not needed to advance the mission. Musk doesn’t listen to the nay-sayers. “The company will fall apart. You cannot take the risk.“

But risk-taking and quickly iterating through some chaos and confusion is part of the first principles approach. If the rocket blows up, you learn, adjust, and try again.

Applying the same principles to DOGE, Musk and his people are exposing the illusion of necessity. As they destroy each witness who stands for a ridiculous status-quo, the entire case for big government falls apart like the Sack o’Suds murder case.

The examples are so easy to find and the numbers so mind-boggling, that Musk’s work should be easy.

It’s a first principle. Big government is inefficient. Congress provided $516 billion in appropriations in one year to expired programs, most of which had expired over a decade ago. Federal buildings have a 12% occupancy rate, and pennies cost three cents to mint.

The screams will be the same as before Twitter became X. “We can’t operate without (insert wasteful agency)”.

Then the press or the opposition will shout, “You can’t touch Medicare or Social Security, and these entitlements are where the real money is.”

What they will fail to tell you is that estimates show the federal government spent $2.7 trillion in payment errors since 2003, mostly in these massive programs. Fixing errors does not impact benefits.

Relentless pursuit of the basic elements of truth will drive the mission home.

Vinny: “Mr Tipton, how does it only take five minutes for you to cook your grits, when the entire grit-eating-world takes 20 minutes?”?

Tipton: “I dunno, I’m a fast cook I guess.”

Vinny: “A fast cook?? ...Are we to believe that boiling water soaks into a grit in your kitchen quicker than any other kitchen on earth?” ?

Tipton: “I dunno, I, I,”

Vinny: “Perhaps the laws of physics cease to exist on your stove?”

The scene concludes with Vinny triumphantly stating, “I got no more use for this guy.”

At your company, what can you break and reimagine? Start from basic physics, and rebuild. ?

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