When we look at how to make a factory more productive, we look at the work flow. We look to see how efficiently ‘work’ is done through all parts of the process that get an item from concept through to the finished goods. In particular we look for bottlenecks. No matter how lean and efficient you make other parts of the system, what determines how much the plant gets done, is how much the bottleneck can get done.
So what? Well, you can invest all you like honing the abilities of other parts of the system, but it will have little impact. The key is identifying what the bottleneck is, which enables you to put your attention in to improving that.
Lets look at an example. Your local branch of Subway. The key steps to get from the customer entering the branch, to them leaving with their sub are:
- Choose bread
- Choose filing
- Have it grilled/heated
- Add salad
- Add sauce
- Bag it up
- Pay
Pretty straight forward right? If one person comes in, this flows very nicely. Add another couple of customers and you can add a few more members of staff – the food will continue along at pace. You can keep upping this until you have a person at each of the 7 processes. Brilliant – customers are rattling through the store. But what happens now if you get even more customers – you double up on some of the jobs right? But you don’t seem to be making subs any faster… everyone has to wait for the microwave to ping! You have found the bottleneck. Rather that putting your effort into finding more staff to double up roles you should be buying another grill.
So how does this translate into your world of productivity? Well your GTD/7HOEP/to-do-list system is a system like any other – your aim is to throw thoughts in at one end, and get actions out the other. In between there is a whole load of processing that is individual to each of us. What we need to do is to look at our system carefully and identify what the bottlenecks are, and put our effort into improving these areas.
Another example, but this time with me and my productivity. Simplistically, I remember that I need to pick up some milk on the way home from work:
- It goes into one of my inboxes (scribbled bit of paper, Dictaphone, etc)
- I enter it into my GTD system online in Toodledo
- I give it the context ‘errands’
- I go about my day
- When I am in the shop later I check my ‘errands’ list on my iPhone and see I need milk
- I get home and my wife had already been to the shops.
Doesn’t seem to be much of a bottleneck, but somehow when I increase the number of tasks through this process I run out of time in the day. So I look in detail. Firstly, inbox system seems slick – a variety of inboxes so I can get stuff captured quickly wherever I am and whatever I am doing. Next I go online, enter things into Toodledo, check e-mail while I have the web open, then check Google Reader for a bit. Hang on hang on… there we go! My system has within it an opportunity for me to sub-consciously waste time every time I input a task! From now on I decide I will only processes my inbox in batches and won’t allow any surfing during that time. Bottleneck widened.
Bottlenecks can occur because of badly planned processes, human nature, outside intervention, or just bad luck. The more you are aware of what and where they are, the easier it is to streamline you productivity. He are just a few ideas of where your might be:
- Online to do list but are often in areas without connection;
- Too complicated inbox so it takes you too long to capture stuff;
- Jumping steps in your processing so you miss items;
- Waiting for other people to do their part of the task;
- Unclear tasks so you have to do things more than once; and
- Distractions at any point in the process.
Where are the bottlenecks in your system?
