Large organizations can fall into a trap of being addicted to fire drills.

Everyone is aware that the organization has gotten slower to create value as it has scaled up, so everyone wants to show that they still have the hustle and aren't the problem.

That leads to everyone looking busy, running around in circles doing no-leverage work.

Sometimes it's not even no-leverage work but anti-leverage.

Destroying value by creating chaos that compels other people, who were previously doing useful things, to respond to.

This then compounds down the line; one person's chaos creates chaos for others to respond to, which creates chaos for the next person.

If you say "I opt out of the performative fire drill so I can focus on doing the real high leverage work" people will think you're lazy, and possibly "the problem" of why everything is going slow.

That creates a very strong social pressure to participate.

An insatiable social vortex that spins faster and faster until nothing in the organization can escape.