Bottleneck
A bottleneck is the one stage that limits how much work your whole business can move, so effort anywhere else just piles work up in front of it. It's the idea behind Eliyahu Goldratt's Theory of Constraints, in plain words: find that stage, keep it on the work only it can do, and fix it first.
Why it matters
The usual instinct is to push harder everywhere at once: more leads, more follow-up, another hire on delivery. If proposals are the slow stage, more leads just make a longer queue of people waiting for a proposal, and some of them go cold while they wait. An hour saved at the bottleneck moves the whole business. An hour saved anywhere else moves the pile.
In a service business the bottleneck is often a person, and quite often it's the owner. Every proposal, price or kickoff that waits on one person moves at that person's pace, however fast the rest of the team works.
An example
As an example, take a consultancy that wins most of its work through proposals. Every proposal goes through the founder, who writes the scope and sets the price. Leads come in steadily and calls get booked, but proposals go out a week after the call because the founder is also delivering client work. Another salesperson would add more calls and a longer wait. The fix sits at the founder's desk: a proposal drafted from the call notes and the usual pricing, so the founder reviews and approves it instead of starting from a blank page.
How a system handles it
A system starts by making the queue visible, so you can see how much work is waiting in front of each stage and for how long. Then it takes everything off the slow stage that doesn't need that person, like gathering the notes, filling the template and chasing missing details, and leaves the judgment with them. Once that stage speeds up, the queue moves somewhere else, and that's the next stage to work on.
Questions
How do I find the bottleneck in my business?
Look for where work waits. The stage with the longest queue in front of it, and the one people chase most, is usually it. In a service business it's often a step that needs one person's sign-off, like a proposal, a price or a kickoff.
Should I hire to fix a bottleneck?
Only once the slow stage is doing just the work that needs it. A hire somewhere else adds nothing, and a hire at the bottleneck inherits the same slow process. I'd take the repeat work off it first, then see whether it still needs another person.
Related
- HandoffA handoff is the moment work passes from one person, team or tool to the next. Why work waits and details get lost there, and how a system carries them.
- Stock and flowStock and flow sees a pipeline as a pile of open deals and the rates at which deals enter and leave. Why the rates matter more than the pile.
- Should I hire an operations coordinator or install a system?What an operations coordinator costs a year, set against installing a system: where each one fails, and which to pick first when your agency is growing.
- Bottlenecks in a service businessWhere work stalls between a new lead and a renewal, found by the symptom you notice, with the system that fixes each one.