There was an old launch video for an Apple laptop where Jony Ive was doing voice over and said something to the effect of, “there isn’t one thing we could remove to make it any better.”

That hit me like a ton of bricks the first time I heard it and drastically changed how I view solving problems. On a call with 20 people trying to figure out what process we need to add to avoid issue Y from happening again, I’m the sole voice asking if we can remove Z, so Y becomes irrelevant. Over time, this leads to a cleaner process with less work. The alternative is a nightmare of bureaucracy.

There also needs to be enough slack in the system for people to ask questions like this, or to take the time to refactor something to remove cruft. The quick low-effort answer is always to add something. When time is scarce, low-effort answers are all you get.

I love the 37 signals guys, I recommend their book Rework.