| This isn't a problem of just building vs meetings; it's the entire package of a company run by human beings. There needs to be a certain amount of communication between the different "organs" of a company in order for it to run efficiently and effectively. With 2-3 people, it's easy: Just go up and talk to the person. Up to 10 people it's still pretty easy, although you now need some coordination to make sure you're not stomping over each other's stuff. At 20-30 people, you can't get anything done without team leads/managers. And this management layer would then handle most of the day-to-day while pushing important information to the exec layer (likely 1-3 people). Getting up to 50 people and now you need to expand the exec layer to cover finance, marketing, production, legal, mission, etc. You'll also have managers handling multiple teams, each with a team lead. Up to 100 people and now you probably have two layers of middle management just to keep the information flow and coordination at human scale. It's a lot like the elevator conundrum ( https://elevation.fandom.com/wiki/Elevator_conundrum ): The taller you build a building, the more space is needed by elevator shafts in order to get people efficiently between floors. There are tricks that allow you to use the elevators more efficiently, but eventually you hit a maximum. People don't like the elevator shafts taking up valuable space, but you also can't have an efficient building without them. And the bigger your organization becomes, the more of these management and policy "elevator shafts" you need. And then your organization just starts to slow down. Innovation stagnates because it takes so damn long for an idea to make its way through the organization, get all the sign-offs, get funding etc. It's why Google can't innovate anymore, despite their attempts to bake innovation into their DNA. A quick visit to https://gcemetery.co/ is enough to show what that "innovation" policy accomplished, and demonstrates that this isn't a culture problem, but rather a human scaling problem. And it's even worse with human scaling, because unlike elevator shafts, humans aren't cogs built to specifications. We also have to handle the chaos of different personalities and traits and skill levels in various things that contribute or detract from harmony IN THAT PARTICULAR ORGANIZATION (that's right: one org's success story can't just be transplanted to another). So yeah, you're not just dealing with production and documentation and meetings; you're dealing with the whole package. And your solutions will have to take that whole package into account. And you'll have to keep revisiting it as your organization grows. |