<The Bottleneck Rules> Quotes

What is a bottleneck?

It’s a resource — that can’t keep up with the demand placed on it.

In a multi-step process like coffee-making, the bottleneck determines the speed (and output) of the entire process. If you speed up the bottleneck, you speed up the entire process.

Don’t forget that bottlenecks are resources, not steps.

(Usually,) all the obvious and easy-to-solve bottlenecks have been found — and tackled — and the only bottlenecks that are left are the devious ones.

The good news for us is that even though bottlenecks are devious, there really aren’t that many places they can hide. They can still be found.

Why It’s hard to find a bottleneck? They can create numerous distractions which diverted attention away from it.

Five types of bottlenecks

• Wild bottlenecks are often hidden and they’re either unmanaged or poorly managed. We find, them tame them using the FOCCCUS formula.
• Tamed bottlenecks don’t have as much capacity as we’d like, but they are visible and they are managed.
• A deliberate bottleneck is designed to deliberately limit the flow through a system.
• Right-stuff bottlenecks are tamed, and their work has been properly curated so they are working on the right stuff.
• Right-place bottlenecks are not only tamed, but they are where the’re supposed to be.

FOCCCUS formula

We use the FOCCCUS formula to tame bottlenecks, much like what horse wranglers do with wild horses. Sometimes, the bottlenecks disappear. Other times, after we’ve tamed our wild bottleneck, they hang around, and that’s okay — provided we are managing them, rather than they(secretly, sneakily) managing us.

Three most important lessons:

LESSON ONE: The bottleneck determines a system’s output.

LESSON TWO: FOCCCUS formula is a simple recipe you can follow to find, then manage, your bottleneck: Find, Optimize, Coordinate, Collaborate, Curate, Upgrade, and Start again (strategically).

LESSON THREE: The ‘If Everyone is Busy, we must be Productive’ Myth

There is a common intuitive belief that the way to maximize productivity is to keep everyone busy.

The truth is that if your team runs faster than your bootlick, they’re just being busy, not productive.

How to solve a bottleneck

Step 1: Find the bottleneck

Over the years, we’ve discovered that thinking costs nothing, is often quicker and more fun, and is also more powerful than just chucking lots of money at the problem.

Step 2: Optimize the bottleneck

Step 3: 3Cs(Coordinate, Collaborate and Curate)

Let’s figure out how the non-bottlenecks need to change to improve the output of the entire kitchen.

We start by Coordinating the non-bottlenecks so they help make the most of our bottleneck.

the second C stands for Collaborate. This step is often the most powerful one in knowledge work environments. It means working together to find out how the non-bottlenecks can help the bottlenecks, without cutting corners.

Often, when they do that, they discover duplicated work that can be cut from the bottleneck, freeing up its time. Sometimes, the non-bottlenecks can do some of the easier parts of the bottleneck’s work. Even if they’re not as fast as the bottleneck at doing the work, handing that work over frees up bottleneck time.

Collaboration (helping) is richest when you are talking about people rather than machine.

The third C is Curate. That’s what museum corator do: they have a huge amount of stock they could put on display, but there is only so much display space, so they carefully choose what goes on display.

When dealing with bottlenecks, we have several different ways we can curate.

remember that a resource becomes a bottleneck when it can’t keep up with demand. When searching for them, we mostly focus on increasing capacity.

However, carefully reducing demand on the bottleneck can also work.

Step 4: Upgrade

In some cases, rather than just follow the bottleneck, we might choose where we want the bottleneck to move to, then make that happen.

The factory owner’s genius was in the fact that he recognized not all of his staff had the broad view of his business that he did. So, he created a few simple rules to help them run their parts of the “car” in a way that kept the entire factory running smoothly.

I’ve discovered that bottleneck management doesn’t stop at merely taming the bottleneck.

Questions

Question: Is the bottleneck working on the right stuff?

Question: Is the bottleneck in the right place?

If you worked on different stuff, would you make more money, serve more breakfasts, teat more patients, or otherwise better serve your purpose?

The curation step in the FOCCCUS formula is often the most powerful, but also the most neglected. It helps us make sure we are pushing the right work through the team given where their bottleneck is.

As for the second question regarding efficiency, it’s not always obvious but not all bottlenecks are created equal.

Sometimes, people think that being a bottleneck is a bad thing, but this was a deliberate, strategic choice to Upgrade the capacity of the team around a strategic bottleneck.

Question: How do I find MY bottleneck?

The quick answer is: Find the long queue/big build-up of work in your process, team or organization, and then look for your bottleneck somewhere in the process just after that.

Slightly longer answer:

ONE — List the major steps in your process(there will be between 2 and 8 steps)

TWO — Look for your bottleneck by doing one or all the following:

• Look for the build-up of work(the queue) in front of it. Your bottleneck step will be nearby.
• Look for the idle resources. Your bottleneck step will happen before that.
• If all the resources are idle(imagine a factory with no work), then the part of your organization that brings in the work(that’s the sales and marketing teams in a business) is your bottleneck.
• Estimate roughly how many things(invoices, defects, etc) can be done by each step/resource each minute/hour/month. The bottleneck resource should jump out at you. You might be able to run reports.

THREE — If there are multiple resources doing that step — such as a coffee machine and a barista — figure out which one is slowing things down.

FOUR — Once you think you’ve found your bottleneck, try to prove yourself wrong. If you can’t, you’ve probably found your bottleneck, If you can, keep looking.