The Bottleneck Detective

What would happen if a business-minded Encylopedia Brown entered the busy line of movie patrons waiting impatiently for soda and popcorn? This perspective guided Clarke Ching in writing his latest book, The Bottleneck Detective. The short story offers a straightforward and enjoyable reading experience, focusing on identifying bottlenecks and understanding their subsequent effects on bottleneck detection. Mark explores Clarke’s FoCCCus™ framework and whether bottleneck detection is a learned skill or an innate talent.

Episode Highlights

1. The Book’s Origin Story

Clarke’s reading of The Goal in 1996
Reading everything on The Theory of Constraints
Experimenting with solving problems using bottleneck thinking

2. A Quick Rabbit Hole

Not Diehard, but The Lord of the Rings
The beauty of New Zealand
Peter Jackson’s gift to the country

3. Billy the Protagonist

The book for Goldratt fans
Billy is based on Encyclopedia Brown
Bottlenecks at the cinema
ChatGPT and fiction
Finding bottlenecks
Crimes, embezzlement, and a happy ending

4. An Outsider’s View

“Fresh eyes see what others cannot.”
The requirement of curiosity
They point out the obvious

5. Is bottleneck detection a skill?

As a young practitioner, the process is slow
Practice leads to improvement
Being careful about false bottlenecks
Clever bottlenecks like to hide
Be aware of bottleneck bias

6. The Best Definition of a Bottleneck

A resource that cannot keep up with demand
Mark’s additional idea: unavoidable vs. avoidable
But we still need people like Mike to operationalize bottleneck issues

7. FoCCCus™

Finding
Starting again (continuous looping)
Coordinate (more left brain)
Update (do not start here, a temptation)
Collaborate (when a team is involved
Currate
The reason Clarke does not use the term ‘exploit’

8. The Empty Seat

The reason marketing or the market can be a bottleneck
A fascinating Goldratt story that includes capacity
While creating capacity, the need to create demand

9. The Bottleneck Game

Bonobos
Redbox
Hyundai

10. Books Mentioned

Highly Recommend

The Bottleneck Detective: What's Stopping You (and your Business) Making More Money? (Theory of Constraints Simplified)

$0.99

In this one-hour adventure, you'll discover how Billy cracked his first case: a mysterious productivity killer quietly draining the life from the Starlight Cinema. While others blamed staff shortages, poor marketing, and tough competition, Billy saw something different—a hidden bottleneck stealing profits right under everyone's nose.