Most people and by extension, most businesses don’t think from first principles. They copy what others do because it’s easier. It reduces cognitive load. But that kind of thinking leads to cargo cults. People doing things that look right but make no sense when you break them down. Business schools teach unit economics and first-principles logic (like in The Goal), but most companies still optimize for quarterly performance. It’s backwards. You end up with systems that reward short-term hacks instead of long-term efficiency.
In the real world, business moves fast. Too fast for most people to stop and think. If you don’t build in ways to slow down and reason from fundamentals, you’ll just react your way into mediocrity. The companies that win long term (Amazon, Toyota, SpaceX) they go back to physics-level thinking. They understand the real constraints and design around them. That’s the cheat code. First-principles thinking isn’t optional—it’s the only way to build something that actually works and lasts.
If you want alignment, set clear rules that everyone understands. At SpaceX, their spending policy was simple: If it helps us get to Mars faster, spend it. If not, don’t. That simple policy helped keep the whole company focused.
In the real world, business moves fast. Too fast for most people to stop and think. If you don’t build in ways to slow down and reason from fundamentals, you’ll just react your way into mediocrity. The companies that win long term (Amazon, Toyota, SpaceX) they go back to physics-level thinking. They understand the real constraints and design around them. That’s the cheat code. First-principles thinking isn’t optional—it’s the only way to build something that actually works and lasts.