Dunbar's number: you can only maintain personal relationships with about 150 people. When a company grows beyond this limit, it has to be managed by process an

Dunbar's number: you can only maintain personal relationships with about 150 people. When a company grows beyond this limit, it has to be managed by process and hierarchy. The human brain simply cannot apply tribal management to a few thousand employees, contractors, suppliers, customers, business partners, etc. If you tell your friends "You guys are crazy, that will never work", they interpret it through an emotional lens that will probably make them enthusiastic about trying harder with a different approach. If you do the same thing to a task group you barely know, their enthusiasm will evaporate and at least a few will start working on their resumes. This is the Brilliant Jerk problem. Some of these Brilliant Jerks can probably be retrained to work in the new, larger company. The thesis of the article is that some of them cannot, and it is best to jettison them sooner rather than later.