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Donuts
I once worked for a CEO who brought in a box of donuts every Saturday morning. If the donuts weren’t gone by Monday morning, we’d get a tongue lashing about how we didn’t care enough.
We set up a rota of employees who lived near the office to go in and throw away the donuts Sunday night.
Quick Quiz, No Tricks
How much water flows through a pipe of capacity 5?
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5. Told you—no tricks. How much water flows through a sequence of pipes, both with capacity 5.
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Same same. 5. (Yes, we can worry about turbulence & leakage at the boundary & all that. I’m making an analogy.)
What happens to the capacity of the system if we expand the capacity of the second pipe to 20?
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What comes out of the second pipe? 5. Why? Because that’s all that went into it. Doesn’t matter how big the second pipe is. We can make it a million & all that will trickle out is 5.
To complete the picture, what if we expand the first pipe?
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Capacity as measured at the end? 5. Again, doesn’t matter how much we expand the first pipe. We can’t put, as my Pappy would have said, 10 pounds of manure in a 5 pound bag. Well, Pappy wouldn’t have said “manure”, but we’re being professional here.
Application
As an executive you accept a trade. You live a life of service, no longer able to do the detailed work. For this loss of control you get wider influence, greater rewards.
One benefit of an executive position is that you can see the whole process, in ways those at the coalface cannot.
Product → Design → Engineering → Operations & Sales & Marketing is exactly one of these multi-pipe situations. Each department’s incentives align with improving their own capacity. You are uniquely positioned to look across the whole chain. (You are also responsible for improving across the whole chain.)
What can you do?
Find the narrowest pipe. Look up-stream & you’ll find half done work piling up. You can do this. They can’t. They are all working to keep their pipe going.
Make sure there’s enough buffer to keep the pipe busy, but no more. This may require reducing the output of upstream pipes. You can do this. They can’t. No one can voluntarily reduce their output.
Expand the narrowest pipe. Don’t bother with the pipes that aren’t narrowest. At best expanding them won’t help. At worst you’ll flood the system. You can do this. They can’t. They are overwhelmed with daily work.
Reduce demand on the narrowest pipe. Can you route some of its work elsewhere, even if that elsewhere isn’t ideal? Again, you can do this. They can’t. The folks getting their work re-routed won’t be happy. Boo hoo.
Stop improvement & shift attention when a new pipe is narrowest. You can do this. They can’t. Your people got credit for improvements (if you did it right). They want more credit.
Mea Culpa
I read the “80 hours weeks or else” pronouncement, got mad, & clapped back.