@rajaraman I love this thoughtful question, thank you.
There is a balance between working on processes too soon, and waiting too long to instill them. Early in a business, you are experimenting. There is no defined, proven process. So the first mistake would be dedicating too much time to creating documentation around unproven processes. We don’t document or formalize anything until we’re ready to delegate it to someone else.
The next mistake would be delegating without documenting, or setting the expectation for the result that you’d like. If someone fails at an experiment, they’re getting closer to a solution. This helps you grow. If someone fails at a proven process, they didn’t have good instructions. This prevents you from growing.
So, I think get-the-job-done scrappiness and process are mutually exclusive. Not something that is tied to the maturity of the business, but tied to the maturity of the initiative.