Have you ever stopped to think about whether you are a bottleneck?  Bottlenecks (or constraints) can be huge barriers to productivity.
 
Manufacturing companies that eliminate their bottlenecks can improve their profitability.  We can do the same in the office environment. Read on to learn more about reducing the chance of being a bottleneck to others.

It’s hard to think of ourselves as being a bottleneck.  There’s no doubt that we’re working hard on not being one. But in what ways do our work habits create delays for our colleagues? 

There is a chance that we are a bottleneck if:

  • People have to follow-up with us repeatedly
  • We have a backlog of people that we need to follow-up with
  • Our feedback or input always seems to come during crunch times right before a deadline

When we put off responding to a request, it may be costing us (and our colleagues) more than we think.  Bottlenecks lead to:

  • Lost time – Our team members can spend wasted time spinning their wheels, tracking us down and re-doing work that could have been corrected at an earlier stage
  • Missed opportunities  – We lose the ability to follow-up on key things
  • Added stress – Putting things off often results in getting crunched against a deadline which is stressful for everyone involved.

Our First Priority

Despite all of the other work on our plate, I recommend prioritizing requests from other people. 

We often do so if a request comes from our manager or a key client. But what about when the request comes from a peer or a direct report? These people can be just as reliant on our input.

What, specifically, can we do?

There are several important things that we can do like:

  • Answer meeting requests as soon as possible
  • Review someone’s work at our earliest time possible
  • Make ourselves readily available for team members so we can help keep projects moving along

 At the end of the day, if a request is worthwhile responding to, it makes sense to do so sooner rather than later.  With this attitude, we’ll reduce bottlenecks and improve productivity.