The Real Business Bottleneck
In engineering, a bottleneck is a phenomenon where one component significantly limits the performance of the entire system.
This means that investing anywhere other than the bottleneck is a waste of resources. Neither a trendy label, nor a technologically advanced cap, nor an ergonomic cup can increase the flow of liquid from the bottle. On the contrary, even the slightest widening of the bottleneck immediately improves the desired result.
So why do many companies act as if they have not one, but dozens of bottlenecks, which is impossible by definition?
Local optimization occurs when a subsystem, such as the marketing or procurement department, considers its own goal to be the most important. This leads to a struggle between subsystems, resulting in a more toxic corporate culture, a less agile company, an unhappy team, and poorer investors.
But don’t rush to accuse people of greed and egocentrism. Local optimization often arises due to a lack of global meaning. Someone failed to convey it to everyone in time. It is clear that the primary source of meaning is the company founder. When founders fulfill their function, if you wake any employee up in the middle of the night, they will blurt out, “Our bottleneck is right here!”
So why don’t entrepreneurs give their employees an answer to this fundamental question? Attempts to understand this inevitably lead to the conclusion that the bottleneck of the company is the founders themselves.
Yours sincerely,
-Alexander
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