In my introductory post, 12 Vital signs of Organizational Health, I listed the 12 signs.  Here is sign #9:

A healthy organization identifies and removes bottlenecks.

I am willing to bet that you are stuck.
Somewhere in your personal life, you are stuck.
And you have not been able to get unstuck.
You may not even know where you are stuck.
But stuck, you are…
(And you might be tempted to blame someone else for you being stuck.  That’s probably a mistake!)

I am willing to bet that somewhere in your organization, things are stuck.
And your organization has not been able to get unstuck.
You may not even know where your organization is stuck.
But stuck your organization is…
You can use other words for this reality, but the one that seems to fit best is “bottleneck.”  Things slow to a trickle at the bottleneck.  Sometimes they completely clog up.  This is not good for the health of your organization.

Since this is a business and business book blog, I won’t reflect too much on the “personally stuck” aspect.  But, in my own life, and in my years of observations of others, being stuck can become an almost chronic malady – you know, you are stuck, and you have been stuck in one place, one way, for a very, very long time.

A friend of mine, a top-notch business consultant, told me this.  Simple – direct.  “People/companies only call me when their pain is more than they can bear.”  Chances are, they call him over some bottleneck that they have.  And, frequently, his first job is to identify just where that is, because the organization does.not.know!  (And, he is very good at this!).

Now, a healthy organization knows that getting stuck is indeed likely.  Every organization gets stuck.

So, what sets the healthy organization above the others?  What does the healthy organization do differently, better than the unhealthy ones?  They are always looking for the current bottleneck.  They identify it.  They tackle it, with time and resources and energy, until they unclog the bottleneck – until they get unstuck.

And then, after about fifteen minutes celebrating their success, they go to work looking for the next bottleneck.

It kind of reminds me of that scene in All the Presidents Men (the movie — I found the script here).  Woodward and Bernstein go see Ben Bradlee.  It’s late into the night.  They call Bradlee out into the front yard (people may be listening).  And he gives them their marching orders:

BRADLEE
Look, you’re both probably a little tired, right?
(They nod)
You should be, you’ve been under a lot of pressure. So go home, have a nice hot bath, rest up fifteen minutes if you want before you get your asses back in gear–
(louder now)
–because we’re under a lot of pressure, too, and you put us there– not that I want it to worry you–
nothing’s riding on you except the First Amendment of the Constitution plus the freedom of the press plus the reputation of a hundred-year-old paper plus the jobs of the two thousand people who work there–
(still building)
–but none of that counts as much as this: you _____________ up again, I’m gonna lose my temper.
(pause; softer)
I promise you, you don’t want me to lose my temper.
(shooing them off)
Move-move-move–what have you done for me tomorrow…?

So, if a vital sign of health is “a healthy organization identifies and removes bottlenecks,” then it seems that leaders have to take identifying, and then removing, bottlenecks as a very serious task.  There is not a moment to waste.  If there is a clog, a bottleneck, if the organization is stuck, you’ve got to get on it, and get it fixed – now. You are wasting time, losing money, and falling behind your competitors until the bottleneck is cleared.

So, where do you look for your bottleneck(s)?  From my reading, it seems to be that the primary bottlenecks are either “the wrong people” or “the wrong processes.”  And probably the book to start with is the long-time, much-respected best selling The Goal:  A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox.  It’s one of those “parable” books, with a fictional company, leader, and consultant.  Here are a few key excerpts:

“Alex, I have come to the conclusion that productivity is the act of bringing a company closer to its goal. Every action that brings a company closer to its goal is productive. Every action that does not bring a company closer to its goal is not productive.’’
“Productivity is meaningless unless you know what your goal is,’’ he says.
“A bottleneck,’’ Jonah continues, “is any resource whose capacity is equal to or less than the demand placed upon it. And a non-bottleneck is any resource whose capacity is greater than the demand placed on it. Got that?’’
We must put our finger on the core problem, on the root that causes them all. That is what actually is meant by identify the constraint. It’s not prioritizing the bad effects, it’s identifying what causes them all.’’

In my synopsis of this book, I summarized the key thoughts this way:

• Something is slowing you down – something is causing the bottleneck
• You don’t know what this problem is
• You don’t know how this problems interacts with other problems
• Once you identify it, and “fix it,” then… you have to repeat the process to find the next new problem. In other words, there is always a slowest point, a “bottleneck” – that you can make much less of a bottleneck
• And, though you want to identify a machine, a piece of software, something physical/tangible, a person, as the bottleneck, it is very likely that the bottleneck is a process bottleneck. Look for the process bottleneck.
• The Theory of Constraints (TOC) means:  There is a (current) constraint (bottleneck). Find the constraint, fix it, get a better process, then find the next restraint.  (“A chain is no stronger than its weakest link”).

(You might also want to read this earlier blog post:  “The fat kid is the bottleneck!” – (Eli Goldratt’s The Goal, and a thought about expertise), and the Slate.com article which prompted it:  “Then Why Did We Buy the NCX-10?”  An oddly gripping thriller about how to manage a factory, by Seth Stevenson).

In a perfect world, in a perfect organization, everything would always run smoothly.  There would never be any kind of bottleneck.  News flash:  we do not yet live in that perfect world.  So, you’ve got your work cut out for you.

Identify and remove your current bottleneck.  Celebrate briefly.  Then, look for and find the next bottleneck.  Every healthy organization gets very good at this task.  They have to.

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You can purchase my synopsis of The Goal at our companion web site.  My synopsis comes with a multi-page comprehensive handout, and the audio of my presentation from the First Friday Book Synopsis.  Order the synopsis from: 15minutebusinessbooks.com.