Coordinate and act
Minimal process, added only to prevent real harm
Treat every new rule as a trade-off. Add one only when the harm it prevents is worth the friction it creates.
Borrowed from Netflix's culture memo, which argues for adding rules only to prevent serious or irreversible harm. Read the original source.
Changes a rule or role · Minutes to start · Anyone on the team can start it
Try this first
Add one question to any proposed rule. What harm does this prevent, and is it worth the cost?
Use it when
Process is accreting and slowing the team.
Skip it when
This is not cover for skipping real safeguards. Some AI-era risks around accountability, safety, and fairness do warrant process. The point is that a rule is a deliberate choice, not that rules are bad.
How to introduce it
Add rules, steps, and approvals only when they prevent real harm: a risk to safety, to the law, or to the work itself. Each has to earn the freedom and speed it costs. When someone proposes a process, the default answer is a question about whether you need it.
How to show up
When the team reaches for a rule, make them name the harm it prevents and weigh it against the cost. Hold the bar high. Retire dead process as readily as you resist new process.
How long it takes
No setup. It's a standing decision rule.
What makes it hard
Adding a rule after an incident feels responsible, so resisting one feels reckless. That is exactly when to weigh the ongoing cost against the single failure. And before you cut a rule, find out what it was doing, because some old process is holding something up.
What it looks like when it's working
New rules are rare and defensible, old ones get retired, and the team stays fast without obvious harm getting through. Process piling up after every incident and never leaving means the bias is not holding.
How long until it sticks
A few cycles of resisting and retiring process before the lean default takes hold.
How you know it stuck
The team asks what harm a rule prevents, and treats retiring dead process as maintenance.
The idea behind it
Every rule buys a little safety and charges you speed and initiative. The charges compound where nobody sees them. Process should be the exception you argue for.
Where it comes from
Netflix's "freedom and responsibility" management model. A bias against new process. Each rule must justify the freedom it costs. Rules are kept minimal and introduced only when necessary. To prevent disasters or meet legal/ethical needs.