What the heck is debottlenecking
I haven’t set a regular writing cadence at all.
I was getting stuck in what to write versus just writing.
So instead of focusing on one topic, I’m going to follow my curiosity and write about:
what’s going on in the world
what’s going on in my life
how to make sense of it
It’s not going to be pretty but it gets the job done.
That being said let’s discuss how businesses are run, how departments are managed, and how to improve them.
A business is a machine - no matter if it’s a multi million dollar company or a home cleaning business making $5k a month.
There’s inputs and outputs, and different stages in between that can slow down the revenue generation depending on where your surplus is
when bids in > bids out, you end up missing deadlines and potential revenue
when project manpower > free manpower, you end up understaffing and going over schedule on projects
when reporting requirements > project manager capacity, you end up not with incomplete reports and potential cost and schedule delays
You can translate these to different industries (I used mine as an example) with similar outcomes.
The key is to use what I’ve learned as “debottlenecking”. Essentially its freeing up capacity where your plug is to allow for more flow throughout the system.
When you have a machine, it’s easier to find the parts to fix and scale its output.
When you have a business, it’s difficult to determine
where your bottleneck is (usually it’s not the human)
how to fix the bottleneck (again, not the human)
So how do you fix your machine?
talk to the person - figure out where their time is going
look upstream and downstream of the bottleneck to see where you can manage inputs and outputs
determine if the problem is due to time or effort - and provide support accordingly
When it’s a time problem
Identify where the most time is going during the task
Create a procedure to follow
outsource or delegate to another person
When it’s an effort problem
Identify where the most time is going during the task
Create a procedure to follow
hire/contract and train other people on the procedure
Notice how these both are the same?
Problems that arise with using this method come in the form of
hiring too many people
relying on too much external software
In both situations, if you have ample documentation, you shouldn’t be hiring more than what your capacity will be and can manage when software crashes.
The fun part about debottlenecking is that you’re never truly done. When you remove one bottleneck, the resistance goes to another part of the business where the same method applies. Fast forward 100s of iterations and you’ve scaled a business.
Coming from someone who sees bottlenecks and was the bottleneck for a time, I want to bring awareness to those in managerial positions to figure out how they can help the parts of their machine work more effectively without running into the scaling trap of hiring too many people.
Feel free to reply with your own experience in removing the bottlenecks of your business. I’d be happy to feature them in future newsletters!