Episode Details
Back to Episodes“The outsized benefits of removing bottlenecks: some personal experiences” by Rory Fenton
Description
I once ran the monitoring and evaluation department of a large nonprofit in rural Tanzania. We had 25 full-time data collectors who ran surveys with farmers on their crop yields and planting practices. My job was to oversee the team, analyze their data and produce reports with actionable recommendations.
The field team was incredibly productive and we were collecting tons of data. We were also producing very few actual reports and horrendously behind on everything. This seemed to me like a “time to work harder” problem but reading a business professor's novel about manufacturing helped me see it differently.
The correct solution was to tell my 25 field staff to stop working for two months.
The most engrossing book I've read since Harry Potter
The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt is a novel about a manager given 6 months to turn around his factory or face closure, and the tactics he uses to get production up. It should not be good. It is very good. I’m not claiming it's great literature but it contains one of those ideas that, once seen, cannot be unseen.
A system moves at the speed of its slowest component, and nothing you do to [...]
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Outline:
(00:55) The most engrossing book Ive read since Harry Potter
(03:54) Rory, the bottleneck
(07:09) Bottles as bottlenecks
(08:23) Some observations on bottlenecks
(09:39) Conclusion
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First published:
April 8th, 2026
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.