Bottleneck in Organizations

There are several definitions for bottleneck. Some interesting ones are:

1.    the neck or mouth of a bottle.

2.    a narrow section of road or a junction that impedes traffic flow.

3.    Bottleneck literally refers to the top narrow part of a bottle. In engineering, it refers to a phenomenon where the performance or capacity of an entire system is limited by a single or small number of components or resources.

4.    In production and project management, a bottleneck is one process in a chain of processes, such that its limited capacity reduces the capacity of the whole chain. The result of having a bottleneck are stalls in production, supply overstock, pressure from customers and low employee morale.

More than resources or system; if we look through the process 90% of the time we will have the ‘Human Being’ as the major source of bottleneck.

Bottleneck or mouth of a bottle is always on the top. Similarly, from the organizational context the “Bottleneck” mostly exists at the top.

Not only it exists at the top of the organizational chart; but it occupies the top of the “Person” also. Most of the time the “Bottleneck” exists in the mind.

As they say, the human mind is the most difficult one to adopt change – it is where leaders fail. Knowingly or unknowingly Leaders create the “bottleneck” in the organizations.

a.    Single point of command: It has to go through the Leader always and all the time!

b.   No new ideas: Can’t accept new ideas or listen to opinions.

c.    Resist the ‘change’. No new way of working!!

d.   We have done this!! That’s the common answer all the time.

e.    Project the scenario as extremely grave and “hold” on to the position as savior.

f.     Create sycophancy. Don’t create future leaders!!

g.   They are never “wrong”. Omniscient is the word for them.

These sort of leadership stymies the process and stops creating a vibrant organization. Organizations should uncork such impediments to unclog the “process”.