CONSTRAINT BUSTING FOR WHANAU ORA @ THE CAUSE COLLECTIVE

IT IS ABOUT BEING A BOTTLENECK DETECTIVE!

I've been asked about my thinking process. What makes me so phlegmatic about stuff? And "crises""? And things going wrong? My short answer is "cause and effect." Nail the causality of the effects you want/desire and you're done. Yup. Done! In spite of resistance, criticism, competition yada yada! Try stopping something from falling to the ground. You can do it. But not without some effort. Gravity causes the fall whether I like the falling, or hate it, or don't believe it, or bend other people's ears and patience non-stop about how bad "gravity making things fall".

Same with making things happen.

Work out the cause (gravity) of those things.

Then you can relax.

HOW IS THIS RELATED TO BOTTLNECKS ?

Imagine .. a bunch of us try to squeeze through a doorway.

Some of us are super speedy.

But if there is one slowpoke in the middle, well, guess what?

We are all stuck!

THAT SLOWPOKE IS THE CONSTRAINT.

Often it is me.

But it might be you, on your own.

Or a process or policy or department or OUCH a whole organisation.

TOC (Theory of Constraints .. thank you Dr Eli Goldratt and ViAGO Ltd Black Belt In Thinking coaches) in its infinite wisdom, says, "Hey, instead of yelling at everyone to go faster, let's figure out how to help that slowpoke!"

THE ULTIMATE AIM OF THIS BOTTLENECK-BUSTING?

To make more of what we want.

Houses (including social housing at Habitat Northern Region Ltd in New Zealand)?

Yep.

More patients treated effectively in General Practices? And hospitals?

Yep/

Money?

Naturally!

We do all that by getting more good stuff flowing through the system (increasing throughput), having less stuff just sitting around gathering dust (reducing inventory), and not spending silly amounts of cash on things that don't help the flow (reducing operating expense).

Sound like a plan?

HERE IS THE FIVE-STEP PROGRAM FOR DEALING WITH THESE BOTTLENECKS:

• First, you IDENTIFY who or what's causing the holdup. Like figuring out that  it’s Ulu who's taking forever in the bathroom when you're late for a movie.

• Then, you EXPLOIT that bottleneck. Make sure Ulu (or you or your friends or colleagues or other department) etc are working their little hearts out and not, say, taking extended tea breaks.

• Next, you SUBORDINATE everyone else to the bottleneck. Everyone needs to help the slowpoke do their thing efficiently. Maybe the speedy folks can prep stuff for the slowpoke.

• After that, you ELEVATE the bottleneck. Can we give them more resources? A faster computer? Maybe even a superhero cape?

• And the big one, the one with the dramatic "WARNING!!!!" If you fix one bottleneck, don't just sit there twiddling your thumbs! Go back to step one because there's probably another slowpoke lurking somewhere. And for goodness sake, don't let INERTIA make you think the old bottleneck is still the problem when it's not. We don't want to be like those folks who keep doing things "that's the way it was always done".

IT IS ALL ABOUT THIS "THROUGHPUT WORLD:

.. where we care about the flow of value, not just trying to cut costs everywhere like some kind of obsessed accountant in a "cost world".

Sometimes trying to be super "efficient" everywhere just creates piles of half-finished stuff – not helpful!.

And if you really want to get fancy, there are these "Thinking Processes".  (Now is a good time to contact ViAGO at https://viagointernational.com/ )

One of them is like a therapy session for conflicting ideas – the "evaporating cloud"  – it helps you find a "win-win solution” instead of a shouting match. Then there's the "current reality tree", which helps you untangle all the bad things happening and figure out the root cause, kind of like figuring out why your plant manager (that's me in this scenario, hypothetically!) is having a meltdown.

YOU KNOW, THIS TOC STUFF IS NOT JUST FOR FACTORIES.

We can use it in banks, for managing projects, even with our families!

I TEACH IT TO MY FOUR GRANDDAUGHTERS – 13, 11, 9 AND 5.

If they can do it, and yak about it, and fix stuff with it (TOC) then why can’t we? Or you? Or your Government Department? Or your hospital? Or your social housing organisation / business? 

In a nutshell ..

TOC is about finding what's holding us / you back, focusing all our / your energy on making that thing go faster, and then repeating the process. It's about being smart and adaptable, not just blindly following old rules.

It is just a cause and effect (the shortest path between what you want and what you’ve got now).

And it is a much more sensible way to run things than just hoping for a miracle!

Get hold of ViAGO. That’s what we’ve done for years at The Cause Collective. Make some of your leaders into Black Belts in Thinking. Then they’ll nail the cause and effect of your bottlenecks and you can live happily ever after .. with you clients, or voters or ..

REFERENCES

Critical Chain. (1997). Critical Chain 1997 23Jan25 PDFDrive.pdf.

Goldratt, E. M. (1994). It’s Not Luck 1994 23Jan25 PDFDrive.pdf. North River Press.

Goldratt, E. M. (2012). The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement (3rd ed.). North River Press.