Koenigsmann did not join SpaceX because he believed in that mission. “I just wanted to develop a rocket with a small team, and not 15,000 people like had been done in the past,” he said. “I wanted to show you could do this with 200.” ARStechnica.com, September 21, 2018, Inside the eight desperate weeks that saved SpaceX from ruin.

This reminded me of the classic quote, “An engineer can do for a dollar what any fool can do for two.” In the Air Force, I settled on a four-to-one rule. It was that any organization I ran could do all the core things they needed to do with just one-fourth of the people we had. It was also the case that in all those organizations I ran and in all my projects, I never asked for more money. I always found that I could get everything done that I needed to do with the resources I had, as long as I was free to go about it in a way that was often considered unconventional.

Compare with we become sloppy with too much.

Behind all of these notions, there is the central idea that we can often do better with less. Sometimes much less. When we have too many resources, it can often get in the way of getting the job done. In my various careers, I always found it humorous, especially in government, that the big problem for a department was trying to spend the money they claimed they needed but ultimately couldn’t actually figure out how to spend it.

Also, see having too much money but not enough time.

Have you tried getting creative with the resources you have rather than asking for more?