That makes sense. And I'm sure a ton of time was spent on things that never saw the light of day. I guess my view on it is that if you want to run a lean startup, X% time is going to work against you. Once you are the size of Google, Amazon, HP, or 3M, then go for it. Otherwise, your startup is your X% time.

This gets tricky with companies that are no longer startups, but are not the 800 lb gorilla in their space either. Do you derive more efficiency from fostering X% time, or by getting your team to focus on the problem at hand?

I suppose that in the end, if your team is unhappy with the overall direction of your company, throwing them an occasional carrot will not fix things. You need to actually fix the underlying problem.