First Principles Thinking: The Hidden Advantage in Organizational Structure

I am a very level headed person (as far as you know). But if you want to see me sweat, say these very words, “We’ve always done it this way.”

Anyone successful borrows constantly. Best practices. KPIs. Marketing initiatives. Fashion trends. There is nothing wrong with this. I have done it my entire career. I’m smart enough to know that I don’t know everything. But this approach only works if you “borrow” and customize to what works for you, your role, team, organization, destination.

What happens if you don’t think it through and just keep adding to your already full slate of priorities, meetings, org chart, etc…? You get a saying that I actually do love,

“If everything is important, nothing is important.”

Consultants or relocated leaders love to bring what worked somewhere else and retrofit it into your team, your culture, your reality.

But what if that “best practice” was never really designed for your needs?

What if the real path to clarity, alignment, and momentum wasn’t addition—but subtraction?

That’s where First Principles Thinking comes in.

What Is First Principles Thinking?
Popularized in recent times by Elon Musk (and founded by Aristotle centuries before him which is where I learned it…in college), first principles thinking is the process of breaking things down to their fundamental truths—and rebuilding from there. First Principles Thinking is not far off from the Darden Restaurant HACCP program I talked about in my last blog.

You don’t reason by analogy, “It worked for “X”, let’s do exactly that”.

You reason by truth:

What do we know for sure?

What are we assuming?

What is the specific problem?

First principles burns the excess and exposes the foundation. Then you build clean.

Your way.

Applying First Principles to Organizational Structure
Most organizations are built on legacy layers—hierarchies, job descriptions, meeting cadences, and decision-making protocols that were inherited, not designed by you. The, “we’ve always done it this way.” layer.

Then we stack on new and exciting culture initiatives, tech platforms, committees, sub-committees, work groups, strategic plans, business plans, operational plans… until the structure is so bloated, we mistake motion for progress.

But if you apply first principles thinking to how your organization operates internally, everything changes.

Ask questions like:

Why does this role exist in its current form?

What are we actually trying to achieve in this meeting?

Do these KPIs tie directly to our strategic priorities—or are we just measuring noise?

What decisions truly require consensus—and which ones just need clarity?

Should our organization really be in charge of this?

These aren’t theoretical questions. They’re operational prompts designed to streamline your already busy day.

First Principles Reveal Misalignment
When you strip down an organization to its most essential component-THE MISSION—you see where alignment breaks down:

A strategy that looks good on paper but no one owns

Values that hang on the wall but not in the workflow

Endless meetings where nothing get accomplished

Leaders that defend their siloed departments and need more, more, more

Pages of KPI’s that don’t really matter

First principles thinking isn’t just minimalist—it creates margin.

By focusing on how work is done rather than how teams are structured, organizations can achieve significant impact and get to what matters.

It gives leadership teams permission to stop imitating and start designing what works for them. Not for optics. Not for compliance. But for clarity and momentum.

What It Looks Like in Practice
At Oetting Alchemy, we walk organizations through this reset.
We don’t add layers—we remove redundancy. We identify that sacred cow and ask you why you care about it so much. I bet your answer is somewhere along the lines of, “that’s how we’ve always done it.” Warning: I will start sweating.

This work is what aligns culture and strategy. It clarifies who owns what, when, and why.

Final Thought

To read the final thoughts and takeaways and subscribe to future thoughts from OA, check out the Oetting Alchemy blog at https://oettingalchemy.com/insightsblog/