Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu says forcing "discipline" on initiative-driven teams can backfire, leaving companies with neither predictability nor drive. He compares metric-led cultures to chaotic, initiative-led ones, while Zoho itself battles a sharp rise in memory and AI token costs, prompting his call for leaner, more memory-efficient programming languages and compilers.

Company culture debates usually settle on one word - discipline. But Sridhar Vembu, the founder of Zoho, argues that leaning too hard on that word can quietly kill the very initiative organisations need.

Two paths, two very different workplaces

Writing on X, Vembu laid out a contrast between two kinds of organisations. In the first, employees look upward for direction and execute against clearly set targets. In the second, employees act on their own judgment, push back on each other, and drive things forward without waiting to be told.

Firms that lean heavily on metrics, he noted, tend to drift toward the first model. That brings predictability, but it also means the entire organisation is only as good as the calls made at the top, if leadership gets it wrong, everyone gets it wrong with them.