Something I've learned in startups is that you've got to have immediate short-term goals and keep pushing towards them relentlessly. In bigger companies with s

Something I've learned in startups is that you've got to have immediate short-term goals and keep pushing towards them relentlessly. In bigger companies with stable revenue the natural sense of urgency is lost, and you can often spend endless time in analysis paralysis or perfecting inconsequential details. Having milestones and deadlines in whatever process you choose to implement is very important to keeping everyone's eye on the ball. The problem comes in when there is not flexibility for the necessary tradeoffs, and it becomes a death march. This is management failure plain and simple. Taking away deadlines may superficially be better for people's health, but it doesn't help the company be more effective which in the long term could potentially lead to everyone losing their job which is ultimately way more stressful.