No matter how perfect our approach we’ve created or how remedial the system design is, two things are true:
- There’s always room for improvement.
- There’s only one factor holding us back from improving our performance right now.
This isn’t magical thinking, where we believe in silver bullets and complete solutions that, once found, will solve every problem we’ve ever experienced.
It’s the Theory of Constraints in action.
The Theory of Constraints was originally developed in an industrial management context. On the factory floor, productivity of workers in a multi-phase delivery process could literally be observed by analysing overall throughput, finding where WIP inventory was building up and identifying where resources were idle.
From this field, some foundational insights emerged…
The most notable of which was that at any given time, there’s only one thing we can call “the” limiting factor.
One thing that’s constraining our output and preventing us from reaching the heights we’re capable of.
As we eliminate one issue, it ceases to be the bottleneck – and something else takes its place.
Effort spent on anything but fixing the bottleneck is essentially wasted.
While it might pay dividends in the future (once we’ve solved the real problem), it doesn’t do anything for us in the here & now.
At best, it’s planning for a future that might never arrive.
At worst, it’s wasted effort that would be better spent unblocking the part of the system that’s actually constraining us.
If we optimise how well we handle something we’re already (relatively) good at, but neglect to improve the places where we’re actually stuck, we don’t get any closer to flow.
And this doesn’t just apply on the factory floor. It applies everywhere – professional and personal contexts alike.
If we’re struggling to hit delivery targets and leave clients perpetually dissatisfied with timelines, it’s tempting to think the system needs a wholesale change. As if throwing everything out and starting again is the solution.
Sure, that might be true in some circumstances. If we’ve started from a fundamentally flawed place, then it might be faster to start from zero and build back better.
But that’s rarely the case.
Likewise: if we’re feeling stuck with something personally (building a habit, breaking an old one, improving some aspect of our experience), it’s easy to become dejected & feel as if only radical effort will do.
Sometimes, that’s true. But rather than firing us up, the belief that only an overhaul is enough usually just keeps us stuck where we are.
Change doesn’t need to be all-encompassing.
It can be gradual. One piece at a time, bit by bit. And before we know it, we’re in a radically better position than where we started.
We improve our results by objectively analysing what we’re doing, identifying the limiting factor – the one thing that, if resolved, would turn something else into the bottleneck – and resolving it.
That’s it.
Everything else is a distraction.