They don’t want your bottleneck.

You can’t remove a bottleneck.

You can only move it.

With your data team you will encounter bottlenecks constantly.

• Some are technology.

• Some are budgetary.

• Some are process.

• Some are human.

Bottlenecks are a constrained part of a system the restricts the movement and production.

It’s the narrow point.

If a VP has to approve every job offer before it can be sent to a candidate, the VP is a bottleneck in the hiring process.

If you only have one employee skilled at building Power BI reports, they are a bottleneck for report requests.

At times you will need to address a bottleneck because it’s too restrictive for your organization to function well.

Here’s the crucial idea to embrace. Bottlenecks don’t go away. They only move.

Always know where you are moving it.

Many times we move the bottleneck out of our sight and then pretend it’s gone. Pipeline running too slow? Scale up server to a higher tier. Did you delete the bottleneck? No, you might have just moved it the balance sheet or the QA process.

If someone is pushing back on your efforts to remove a bottleneck? Pay attention to why. It’s likely you are moving the bottleneck to something that impacts them directly.

The greatest data leaders constantly think about the systems, strategies, and constraints of your team and org.

What’s a bottleneck you are facing right now?

I’m here,

Sawyer