Hi Leo, I am not advocating for a flat hierarchy, but I am concern about approval gates, hand-offs, and all the stuff that gets in the way of delivering actual work.

In fact, my experience has shown me that the major overhead and blocker to deliver is bureaucracy. And speed, is often limited by this, rather than the number of developers working on a given company. Well, my experience, but also the research shown in the Accelerate book. (well, and many other cases, in fact, I have "borrowed" the fragment of the first paragraph from Lauren Lyons)

The idea is not having a flat hierarchy, but allowing the work to be delivered. That means giving to every member of the organization the tools, the responsibility, and the power to do their job.