Viscosity

You're seeing it when a decision that should take a day takes three weeks because it must pass through multiple approval layers, cross-functional reviews, and status meetings. The organisation's viscosity — its resistance to flow — is the bottleneck.

You're seeing it when customers are slow to switch from an incumbent despite a better alternative. The market's viscosity — switching costs, contractual lock-in, habit — keeps them stuck in place.

You're seeing it when users abandon an onboarding flow because each step adds friction. The sign-up process has high viscosity — too many steps resisting the user's forward motion.

Map the decision and information flows in your company. Identify where viscosity is highest — the approval chains, handoffs, and processes that slow everything down. Eliminate unnecessary steps, flatten approval structures, and push decision authority to the point of action. Your goal is an organisation where the right things happen quickly by default, not one where speed requires heroic effort.

Hastings built Netflix by systematically reducing viscosity at every layer. He eliminated approval hierarchies for content spending, trusting informed captains over committee processes. He removed vacation policies, travel policies, and expense policies — each one a viscosity-adding layer that slowed decision-making without improving outcomes. The "Netflix Culture Deck" codified low-viscosity principles: context over control, freedom with responsibility, high talent density enabling minimal process. Hastings understood that organisational speed is a function of viscosity, not effort. For founders, the lesson is direct: every policy, approval layer, and process step you add increases viscosity. Add only what's essential and strip everything else.