Minimum Viable Process (MVP)
Introduce the least process that reduces variance, and give your best people escape hatches
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 90%
Process is variance-reducing by definition: you add it because your org's variance is too high. But raising the floor also lowers the ceiling — it averages down your highest performers and most creative thinkers, who don't need process to do their best work. Eeke de Milliano's answer is the Minimum Viable Process: set the lowest bar that achieves consistency, mark templates as a floor not a ceiling, and explicitly give people permission to break out.
Origin
Eeke de Milliano, Head of Product at Retool and early Stripe PM; she connects it to Ian Leslie's argument (via Russ Roberts' EconTalk) that standardizing humans to be more robot-like quenches creativity.
Core principles
- 01Process is variance-reducing by definition — you add it because org variance feels too high
- 02Reducing variance averages high performers down, not just low performers up
- 03The more formulaic and mass-produced you make work, the more you quench creativity
- 04Templates should be a floor to clear, not a ceiling to fit inside
How to run it
- 1
Acknowledge the real cost before adding process
Recognize that any process brings your most creative, highest-output people toward the average. Only introduce it if you're genuinely okay with that trade-off.
Watch out Companies add ever more process as they grow to corral people who don't need it — be sure the variance reduction is worth losing the high-highs.
- 2
Ship the minimum viable version
Introduce the least process that gets you the consistency you need — the minimum bar — rather than a heavy, comprehensive system.
- 3
Build in explicit escape hatches
Write permission-to-break directly into the artifact. Put a line at the top of every template saying: if this doesn't work for what you're trying to explain, don't use it — this is the minimum, go higher if you can.
Pro tip Managers are the mechanism: they detect high performers, exempt them from process, and give them air cover for the special treatment.
Watch out Special-casing top performers means accepting organizational cost — decide who is worth 'breaking the org' for.
In the wild
Eeke de Milliano now writes at the top of her templates that if the template doesn't fit what someone is trying to explain, they should feel free to break out of it or not use it — the template is explicitly framed as the minimum bar, with an invitation to exceed it.
→ People get the consistency benefit of a template without being pigeonholed, preserving room for the best thinkers to go beyond it.
Claire (former Stripe COO) framed the exemption decision as: are you willing to break the org for this person? Managers give standout performers special treatment and air cover, accepting the organizational cost because those people break the org in the best way possible.
→ A clear decision test for when to exempt someone from process rather than averaging them down.
Common mistakes
Averaging down your best people
Blanket process brings high performers and creative thinkers down to the mean — the exact people who deliver the highest highs and least need the process.
Treating templates as mandatory ceilings
Without an explicit escape hatch, people fit their thinking to the template and stop going beyond it, making work more formulaic and less creative.
Is it for you?
Best for
Scaling-company leaders feeling pressure to add planning, spec, and review process as headcount grows
Not ideal for
Situations of genuinely dangerous or compliance-critical variance where a hard, non-optional standard is required
From the transcript
“process by definition is variance reducing like you're introducing it because you worry that the variance in your org is too high”
“you're also bringing other folks down to the average and oftentimes the folks are bringing down are your highest performers your most creative thinkers”
“give folks Escape hatches so I've started referring to this as like the the MVP the minimum viable process”
“if this doesn't work for what you're trying to explain like don't use it but like just know that this is the minimum viable thing”
“are you willing to break the org for this person”
From the episode
How to foster innovation and big thinking
Eeke de Milliano (Retool, Stripe)