How teams overcorrect after a shock, and why lean brings them back.

My first business started in 2003 with almost nothing.

Five years of experience in the fledgling internet industry, a laptop on buy-now-pay-next-year, a pile of old IT equipment I traded in at CEX, naïve optimism, no real financial commitments and a stubborn conviction that there had to be better ways of working. That it should be possible to do great work and have fun without burning people out.

Lean, the first time round

That combination of attitude and constraint led me to found a web games studio that became exceptionally good at being lean.

We hit deadlines, often early and always within budget. Not because we worked heroic hours or cut corners, but because we stayed focused on outcomes. We kept asking the same question: what is the shortest path to the thing that actually matters?

Crucially, we did not fall in love with solutions. We treated them as disposable. If a cheaper or faster route appeared, we took it. That discipline created momentum, trust, and a steady stream of small wins.

When abundance becomes the plan

Then, about thirteen years ago, I encountered the idea of scarcity versus abundance mindset. It landed hard, too hard in hindsight.

I shifted the studio away from client work and towards building our own IP. It was ambitious, risky, and exciting. Eventually it culminated in pitching on Dragons’ Den for more money than anyone had ever asked for at that point.

It did not end well.

The mistake was not ambition itself. The mistake was letting ambition replace lean. I had succumbed to sunk cost bias. We kept going because we had already invested so much, not because the signals still made sense. The business nearly failed as a result.

And in comes scarcity

What followed was a long period where caution dominated decision making. Contexts changed, ownership changed, incentives shifted, but the underlying behaviour was consistent. Risk was framed primarily in terms of downside, motion slowed, everything required justification.

I responded by working longer and longer hours. Eighteen-hour days became normal. I gained a lot of weight and then, in my early forties, I was diagnosed with stage three oesophageal cancer, which is unusually young. Stress was not the sole cause, but it was undoubtedly a contributor.

I don’t share that for sympathy but because it underlines something important. Scarcity is not just inefficient, prolonged scarcity is dangerous.

The shock, and the long shadow

Since then, I have seen the same pattern repeat across many organisations, often after a period of overreach or instability.

The initial correction is usually abrupt. A sharp change in direction, emergency measures, hard constraints imposed quickly to stop further damage. In the moment, those decisions are often necessary.

The problem comes later. Long after the shock has passed, its logic remains, the organisation continues to behave as if it is still in immediate danger. Risk is treated as inherently suspect, motion requires disproportionate justification and the first reasonable objection is accepted as final.

What begins as sensible restraint slowly turns into hidden inefficiency. Not because people are careless or incapable, but because the system never reintroduces safe ways to move.

Where lean actually fits

This is where lean gets misunderstood.

Lean is often conflated with scarcity. In practice, they are opposites. Scarcity says do not act. Lean says act cheaply. Scarcity optimises for certainty. Lean optimises for learning.

Therefore abundance without lean leads to overreach and scarcity without lean leads to paralysis. Both are understandable responses to past experience. Both become destructive when left unchecked.

Organisations, like people, adapt to past harm. When trapped in the grip of scarcity – caution feels sensible, inaction feels responsible and challenging assumptions can feel unsafe. But without motion, trust erodes. Future choices narrow. Teams stop building evidence and start building narratives about why nothing is possible.

Lean is the stabiliser that prevents this oscillation. It is not optimism. It is not austerity. It is the discipline of safe-to-fail movement. Small bets, fast feedback, clear constraints, visible progress.

A simple test

If your team is exceptionally good at explaining why things cannot be done, but struggles to produce small, concrete wins, you are not being lean. You are stuck.

Survival mode may be necessary for a moment but it becomes dangerous when it hardens into culture.