I think you are taking my point to the extreme here. I did not say loose deadlines and minimal pressure. I argued against spreading your employees too thin. Tha

I think you are taking my point to the extreme here. I did not say loose deadlines and minimal pressure. I argued against spreading your employees too thin. That doesn't imply automatically that I advocate for a complete laissez-faire approach to managing your employees (although with the right people, in the right situation this can work very well). What I argue for is that during normal, daily, non-emergency work hours your employees should not run at or over capacity but with a headroom. And if you want them to solve a long-standing, complex problem and you want them to solve it well, you have to give them the resources (e.g. time, mindspace) to do just that. Sometimes this just means: "Steve, on Fridays you don't have to answer any emails and phone calls, or do any other thing, just focus on finding a good solution to $PROBLEM"). In my experience that yields better solutions and doesn't take much longer (quite often the opposite).