Entrepreneur's Algorithm: Bottlenecks All Day
Theory of Constraints has been around for a while. It directs all management energy to the thing that matters most: the bottleneck. It can be a task, a situation, a deadline, or a milestone without which there is no moving forward. The entrepreneur’s primary job, then, is to identify, assess, and eliminate bottlenecks.
The work begins on the ground. Physical constraints of unreached performance metrics, delayed certificates, or unawarded contracts are the obvious, most urgent places to start. These are the daily fires of sorts. Your primary levers here are talent and capital. But often, it requires the entrepreneur to step in and absorb others’ responsibilities. The hardest part about these bottlenecks is their incessant nature. They test the organization's stamina regularly. Teams that keep pushing through, keep building up, and keep staying in business; the rest tend to falter. Grit, perseverance, and strong-headedness are the qualities required here.
Do not get stuck in the mud; there is much more to do. Abstract constraints of cultural misalignment, missing personnel, and perverse incentives are much harder to identify and often lead to slow decay. Here too, a good team helps, especially in identification, as many of these issues only surface through conversations among teams or persons of varying interests. However, many organizations tilt the other way and over-index on abstract constraints, creating them where there were none. It is a fine balance. To assess a problem's qualification as a true bottleneck, it is a good idea to trace its impact back to the physical output. Wit, patience, perception, and communication are the qualities required here.
In the early days, it feels like every problem is a bottleneck that can only be resolved by the entrepreneur. To an extent, this is true. But if all goes well and the work is being done, a paradoxical bottleneck emerges: the entrepreneur. As this is inevitable if the organization is to scale, it is best to work on this preemptively, to slowly build the organization away from oneself. This calls for baking in various kinds of procedure-building, trust-building, and team-building time. This is the hardest bottleneck of all: if left unaddressed, it can lead to stagnation; if done badly, it can completely alter the path of the organization, leaving it faceless and cultureless.
Yet, there is a danger to this relentless pursuit. Sometimes the machine itself is broken, and the bottlenecks being fixed are only leading to deeper problems. The high friction being experienced—the insurmountable bottlenecks paired with what feels like unending bad luck—might be an indicator that the flaw is one level higher. It is intoxicating to solve one bottleneck after another, and the people around you are geared to execute. To take a step back and reassess, therefore, is both brave and vital. The entrepreneur, then, is relentless, but not without cause and reason.