As much as I agree with the high-level message, I disagree with the specific list. The list makes sense from the bottom, where the goal is to get stuff done. T

As much as I agree with the high-level message, I disagree with the specific list. The list makes sense from the bottom, where the goal is to get stuff done. The list makes no sense from the top, where the goal is to make sure the right stuff gets done. Without a lot of those, you end up either with: - 1000 employees moving in 1000 directions - 1000 employees working from home doing nothing ... or similar pathologies. Organizational alignment is hard. I would have written a similar list to yours two decades ago, but right now, I see just how much effort it takes to make sure things don't go in the _wrong_ direction. The good stuff on your list to eliminate are management layers, excessive features, and promotions / performance reviews / stack ranking. Most of the things designed to provide communications, alignment, and transparency (e.g. documentation, spreadsheets, blog posts, many types of internal tooling / dashboards, backlogs, retrospectives, minutes, agendas) are very much necessary evils. There might be better ways to accomplish some of those same goals, but if you just cut them, organizations break, and break very badly. You definitely can (and should) do without those at 1-5 people, and possibly up to 30. It's worth noting "people" here often includes external stakeholders, such as investors.