I sorta wonder where the line on organizational formalization ought to be. I'm part of an organization that functioned well for many years with little internal

I sorta wonder where the line on organizational formalization ought to be. I'm part of an organization that functioned well for many years with little internal structure, but now, many of the original principals are aging out of the org, and things are just not working as well without those strong personalities to guide things. Formalization allows you to swap people out like interchangeable components, but it also acts as strictures that can reduce or in some cases completely eliminate flexibility and dynamicism. I personally advocate for policy and structure as guidelines, but not as law, it gives folks a seed as to how an organization ought to function - but not so rigid as to act as a girdle to prevent the organization from dynamically responding to changing situations. You want a some critical path areas to be written down as law, but everything else should be lose convention that can be changed at dynamically as conditions suit. This analogy even extends to programming, somewhat obviously. It's an interested and relevant discussion for corporate culture, how we govern, and how we organize non-profits. I long ago concluded that the largest cause of failure for startups with an otherwise marketable product, was failing to create a self-sustaining organization, and organizational culture.