Where Is the Bottleneck — in a Person or in the System?
When a bottleneck in the business is searched for, a name usually gets found: “the accountant is slow”, “the salesperson doesn’t follow up”, “the foreman delivers late”. A name is found, the person changes, the bottleneck stays put. 🧱
Short answer: mostly in the system. If the person changes and it still jams in the same place, the problem isn’t the person but how that point is built. Changing the person is expensive; changing the system is cheap.
Below: how to find the bottleneck, the person-versus-system split, the three most common bottlenecks and the order for clearing them. 🔍
How is the bottleneck found?
A bottleneck in the business sits where the most work waits.
Person or system?
The split is made with one question.
What if the person really is the problem?
Then the system still gets written first — because the new person will enter the same system. A change made without rules repeats the same problem under a new name.
The three most common bottlenecks
BU BÖLÜMÜN ÖZETİ
- The approval bottleneck
- The information bottleneck
- The checking bottleneck
Three points that recur in the field.
The approval bottleneck
Every decision comes to the owner; the owner is in a meeting, on the floor or on the phone; the work waits. The fix isn’t a new person but an approval limit: up to this amount, in this situation, the team decides — details in the time article. 📏
The information bottleneck
Customer history, pricing logic, supplier relationships — all in the owner’s head. The team asks because it doesn’t know, and waits because it asked. The fix: write the ten most-asked pieces of information on one page. 📄
The checking bottleneck
The owner looks at every job before it goes out. The quality concern is understandable; but checking is done through sampling and checkpoints, not on every job. An owner looking at every job can’t really look at any. 🔬
What happens once a bottleneck clears?
There’s a surprise.
The next bottleneck appears
When the approval bottleneck clears, work speeds up and piles at the next point — usually information or checking. That isn’t failure, it’s progress: the bottleneck moves, it doesn’t disappear. Management is the job of moving the bottleneck in sequence. 🔁
What’s the clearing order?
Not all at once.
Cheapest to most expensive
First the approval limit — one line, same day. Then the information page — a week. Last the checkpoint — because that’s what the owner finds hardest to let go of, and it isn’t let go before the first handover succeeds. Handover design sits in the handover article, all questions on the business management consulting page. 🪜
📝 Field Notes
At one business the word was “the salesperson is slow”; three salespeople had changed in two years. We drew the workflow: every quote went to the owner for approval and the owner looked at it about two days later. The salesperson wasn’t slow; the approval was. An approval limit was written; with the same salesperson, quote time dropped to one day. Three people changed; one line was never written. 🧱
📖 Quick Glossary
Bottleneck: the point where work waits longest. Approval limit: the written threshold below which the team decides without asking the owner. Checkpoint: the moment a handed-over job gets reviewed. Sampling: looking at selected jobs rather than every one.
⚡ Quick Summary
The bottleneck is mostly in the system, not the person. 🧱 The test: does the jam clear if the person changes? Three common bottlenecks: approval, information, checking. A cleared bottleneck moves; that’s progress. Order: approval limit, information page, checkpoint.
🎯 Next Step
Let’s draw your workflow together and find the longest wait — the first review is free: the digital audit. Scope on the consulting page. 🔍
Frequently Asked Questions
Sık Sorulan Sorular
Write down the points a job passes through from start to delivery: quote, approval, production, check, delivery, invoice. At each point estimate the average wait. Wherever the longest wait is, that’s the bottleneck — and usually that point is the owner. ⏳
A queue forms where capacity doesn’t meet demand. But in a small business the queue usually comes not from capacity but from a single door: everyone waits for the same person’s approval. 🚪
If the person at that point changed tomorrow, would the jam clear? If the answer is “no, the new one would get stuck in the same place”, the problem is the system: no authority, no rule, information in one place. If “yes”, the person is discussed — but that case is the minority. ⚖️
Because the person is visible and the system isn’t. “The salesperson doesn’t follow up” is easy; “we have no written rule for follow-up” comes back to the owner. Seeing a system problem means taking responsibility. 🪞
In most cases it is, and that’s good news: you’re the easiest person to change. An approval limit and an information page get written in a week. The hard part isn’t the decision but the habit.
Write the system first, then look at the person; the new person enters the same system. Someone hired into a written system takes over fast and asks less. A change without a system repeats the same problem under a new name.
Not if the checkpoint is set up properly; instead of looking at every job, you sample and measure outcomes. Today you look at every job, but tired. Less but careful checking beats more but superficial checking.