Your Business’s Throughput is Worse Than You Think

* This article by MashTank’s founder, Michael White, originally appeared in Forbes.

In order to speak more clearly on the subject of real business throughput (not perceived, subjective throughput), allow me to first run through a hypothetical scenario.

You’re driving down a four-lane highway when, on the horizon, you see red brake lights. Everyone across all lanes begins to slow down, bunch up and creep towards…ah, a construction zone. Everyone is reduced to one lane, people merge and get impatient and you all inch through past the orange-vested team, who can probably feel the irritation in the air.

But at last, you see the end is near: One lane becomes two, then three, then four and you all punch the gas to make up for lost time. Around you, the highway is much less crowded than before because many are still caught in the single lane in your rear-view mirror. What is perceived as speed, openness, and capability is really just an illusion—you can’t actually effectively perform better now than if you had not gotten stuck in traffic.

In this situation, though the highway starts and ends with four lanes, the throughput is only one, because everyone must jam through that one-lane zone. As the leader of a BI diagnostics and analytics company, I see this exact situation in many businesses—no matter the industry—when it comes to their operational processes.

When it comes to business operations and optimization, 4-to-1-to-4 is still just 1.

While most teams or stages of operation might boast a four-lane throughput, in my experience, there is always a one-lane zone that slows everybody down. The actual throughput of that business, or that operational arm of a business, is just one. Or, if you prefer another metaphor, think of the trusty adage, “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.”

This is my favorite metaphor for showing the raw capability of a team (four or more lanes) versus how they’re realistically operating (one lane) and how almost no business is performing at max capacity or full potential.

So how do you fix this?

First, you measure. There are dozens upon dozens of proven operational models that can be applied to the core processes of your business. The core processes are what make your business run, and they can be divided into two groups.

1. Customer Delivery Core Processes

These are the processes that create output that goes directly to the customers. For example, a customer support chat team, a UX team rolling out app updates, a design team making a Product 2.0—anything teams work on that result in the end user’s (the customer’s) satisfaction.

2. “Run the Business” Core Processes

These are the processes that are part of the support framework for the customer-delivery processes. Take, for example, the quarterly financial meetings that determine capacity for new hires, the retreat that gives the design team a creative boost, the market research that feeds the marketing team, the administrative tasks that HR and payroll handle regularly, the strategy meetings COOs hold with managers and more. These are all operations that, before affecting the end-user customer, go through another user: the employees across various teams who help keep the business running.

There are many proven operational models, ranging from superstars like Six Sigma or Lean—both of which are quality control and benchmarking principles—to the powerful but lesser-known Theory of Constraints, which involves identifying the most impactful constraint or bottleneck and addressing it systematically until it’s eliminated or optimized. Choosing one (or a combination) depends upon many factors, such as team size and industry. Just think of them as many summarized and branded ways to chase the same ultimate goal: improving productivity, profitability, and/or throughput by looking at core processes and how they could be better.

There is no single perfect model, nor is a process ever going to be 100% governed by one model, but to use no model at all to assist in the organization and execution of a core process is a recipe for disaster. It limits what is possible for the operator and the end-user, and it makes the organization spend more time working on throughput and quality than on the ultimate customer experience.

And as leaders know, anything that detracts time from the ultimate customer experience is a loss of value and profitability.

These operational models can seem like academia that is out of touch with factory or field operations and realities. But the mathematics applied in these models make it possible to measure and improve throughput, maximizing quality and opening up bandwidth to focus on the customer journey. These models have the power to improve a process through all the series of stages, handoffs, teams, etc., and when paired with reliable performance data, they can turn missed opportunities and underutilized assets into high-performing systems.

We help you hit the gas on every inch of road available and, in doing so, improve things like productivity, profitability, and, our favorite, time saved... giving people more discretionary time to be Happy, Productive Humans.

Are you operating at full power? Do you have the right models applied to your operations to keep your teams productive and happy? Do you have a way to measure so that you may improve over time?

I ask these questions because many talented leaders shy away from tackling that which doesn’t seem measurable. But it’s only by tackling these nebulous issues—like perceived versus actual throughput—that you can begin to find out how to measure and therefore improve them. Using proven optimization tactics can get you operating at a higher capacity, higher productivity, higher profitability, and higher team happiness.

Measure how well you’re doing in this aspect, and dozens of proven others, with Atlas. We don’t boast a 12:1 ROI by just talking, let us show you the numbers. 

* This article by MashTank’s founder, Michael White, originally appeared in Forbes.