[bibliographer]

I am somewhat skeptical of the claim that "one of the best things a mid/low performing company can do is to reduce toil". It feels that this principle is dependent on the context to the extent of not being useful guidance anymore.

For instance, if the company is pre-product-market fit reducing toil seems like the wrong investment; doing stuff manually can be the way to go until you find what works (unless the effort investment in toil reduction is trivial).

If the company has reached something approximating product-market fit, reducing toil still ought to be weighed against the other priorities. That (as all technical debt reduction) can do wonders to productivity, but alternatives (e.g. pushing for a new feature) may as well be the better call.