"What I like about your answer is how you kind of say that's not possible and then immediately hit on one way it might be possible."
Its an engineering crutch, like people walking around in a building cannot cause it to fall down, but if everyone jumped at the exact same cadence they could. Any thing is possible, sometimes the requirements to get there are so difficult the solution becomes effectively impossible.
If you consider Google as an example, the roughly 1,500 people who are in the search and ads teams make all the money for the company. Everyone else is, rounded to the nearest billion dollars, a non-contributor. But rather than accumlate cash faster than the Federal Reserve can inject it into economy, they spend it on projects which might get them into other markets. Or sometimes create entirely new markets. But that gives them size. And at both Sun and Google its pretty clear that the Bozo Event horizon hits somewhere between 10K and 15K non-sales employees. I don't know why that is, just that it has hit there two times. If Jim's reading he can pitch in DEC's number.
I agree with you're assessment that there are always other growth strategies, and I can identify things that contribute to the incursion of bozos, but that is a long way from the experiment that can show a bozo free stable organization with growing revenue.
that is a long way from the experiment that can show a bozo free stable organization with growing revenue
Agreed, but let's look at it from the other side. Suppose one such experiment did succeed. How significant would that be? (I say very. Because it would change people's thinking about what's possible.)
Also worth pointing out: such an organization wouldn't need to stop growing, just hire at a slower than traditional rate. Seems to me you could grow for a long time before hitting "between 10K and 15K non-sales employees".
Its an engineering crutch, like people walking around in a building cannot cause it to fall down, but if everyone jumped at the exact same cadence they could. Any thing is possible, sometimes the requirements to get there are so difficult the solution becomes effectively impossible.
If you consider Google as an example, the roughly 1,500 people who are in the search and ads teams make all the money for the company. Everyone else is, rounded to the nearest billion dollars, a non-contributor. But rather than accumlate cash faster than the Federal Reserve can inject it into economy, they spend it on projects which might get them into other markets. Or sometimes create entirely new markets. But that gives them size. And at both Sun and Google its pretty clear that the Bozo Event horizon hits somewhere between 10K and 15K non-sales employees. I don't know why that is, just that it has hit there two times. If Jim's reading he can pitch in DEC's number.
I agree with you're assessment that there are always other growth strategies, and I can identify things that contribute to the incursion of bozos, but that is a long way from the experiment that can show a bozo free stable organization with growing revenue.