More People Won't Fix It

Most organisations respond to a problem the same way: they add something. A new role. A new process. A new tool. A new weekly sync. The assumption is so deeply embedded it rarely gets questioned — if something isn't working, it must be because something is missing.

It rarely is.

The Addition Reflex

A department misses a deadline, so a project manager gets hired. Communication breaks down, so a new reporting layer appears. Quality dips, so a review committee forms. Each addition makes sense in isolation. Together, they create the very friction they were supposed to eliminate.

E.F. Schumacher put it sharply: any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes courage to move in the opposite direction.

That courage is rare because subtraction feels like loss. Removing a role looks like giving up. Cancelling a meeting looks like losing control. Killing a process looks like admitting a mistake. Addition feels productive. Subtraction feels like retreat.

What You Remove Reveals What You Value

The teams that move fastest aren't the ones with the most resources. They're the ones with the fewest dependencies. One senior person with decision-making authority will outperform a committee of twelve with a shared inbox, every time.

This isn't about running lean for the sake of it. It's about recognising that most performance problems aren't resource problems. They're clarity problems disguised as capacity problems. You don't need more people in the room. You need fewer people with more permission.

Stop Adding

Next time something breaks, resist the instinct to fill the gap. Ask what you could remove instead. Which meeting. Which approval step. Which role that exists only because no one had the nerve to question it.

The answer to "not enough" is rarely "more."