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This seems to be a good heuristic , find out the ratio of the doers versus middle-managers , the higher this number is the better it is.

One other company that exhibits this nimbleness ala Apple despite its size is Goldman Sachs. From personal experience , among other things , GS gets this ratio right where it counts.

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How about various militaries?

at least the bottom levels of regular military hierarchies are usually quite well defined in terms of structure, titles and numbers. which is sort of the whole point: people know what is expected of them.

how much similarity there is between various countries I don't know, but it would surprised me if at least western military hierarchies are very different. (similarity between nations makes cooperation easier, but where there are differences there usually exist mappings. for instance between different systems of rank)

Yes. I was interested in how many `manager'-types vs `doers' there are in the various militaries. I read in a recent Economist that e.g. the German Bundeswehr is relatively top-heavy with too many officers.

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