Don't Be Like Lucy
How to scale your business by fixing the weakest link first
Recently, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, I was browsing Hulu when a flash of red hair and bright lips caught my eye. It was a timeless masterpiece and one of the most well-known shows of classic TV - an episode of I Love Lucy titled The Chocolate Factory.
Have you seen it?
In the episode, Lucy and Ethel are hired to work on the assembly line of a chocolate factory. Their task is simple - pick up each piece of chocolate that comes down the conveyor belt, wrap it, and place it back on the belt.
Sounds easy, right?
As the scene begins, a stern manager gives Lucy and Ethel their instructions with a warning.
“If one piece of candy gets past you and into the packing room unwrapped, you’re fired! Now let ‘er roll!”
One by one, chocolates start coming down the conveyor belt as Lucy and Ethel diligently pick up and wrap each one as they were instructed. They start to get in a groove. “Well this is easy!” Lucy says. “Yeah, we can handle this ok,” Ethel replies.
And then the conveyor belt starts to pick up. More and more chocolates come down the line and their look of confidence quickly turns to panic. Not wanting to let an unwrapped candy slip by, they start desperately pulling pieces off the belt and into their mouths, down their shirt, or in their hat. Inevitably, some slip through to the packing room.
“I think we’re fighting a losing game!” Lucy exclaims.
As a kid, I loved watching this episode because I imagined how exciting it would be to work in a candy factory. As an adult, I appreciate it even more seeing the parallels between their experience on the assembly line and the challenges that arise in a growing business.
Building a business often starts by feeling a lot like Lucy and Ethel’s first moments on the chocolate line. Things are smooth, you get in a groove, and your confidence lifts. You think you’ve got everything under control and it’s clear skies ahead.
And then things start to pick up.
A process that once worked great, over time becomes unmanageable. Like the chocolates on the conveyor belt, issues pile up until it feels like you’re stuck in a place you can’t seem to get out of.
We all face challenges as we grow our business. It’s unavoidable. But how do we make sure that these “Lucy moments” are an exception and don’t become the norm?
And if we do find ourselves in a place where we’re shoveling chocolates in our mouths just to keep up, how do we dig ourselves out?
To sustainably scale a business, always fix the weakest link first.
You’ve heard the saying that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Well, the same applies in your business. At any given time, there is only one place in your business that’s the weakest link.
Trying to strengthen parts of your business that aren’t the weakest link won’t make the chain any stronger. It’s called an optimization trap and it’s a waste of your limited time and resources.
Instead, be disciplined about sniffing out and fixing the weakest link.
Here’s how to find your weakest link.
Think about your business like it’s a chocolate factory. Every process is like a production line.
Your process for acquiring new customers.
Your process for serving your clients.
Your process for developing and implementing new ideas.
If you were in Lucy’s shoes, that stern supervisor would tell you that every production line seeks to avoid two things above all else - bottlenecks and defects. In your business, you should too.
A bottleneck can kill the production of an entire factory. In the chocolate factory, it didn't matter how much capacity the packing room had. They could only pack as many chocolates as Lucy and Ethel were able to send down the line. They were a bottleneck because they caused a slow down of the entire chain.
To find bottlenecks in your business, look for these signs:
Backlogged work. Is there too much work piled up at one part of a process, and not enough at the other end?
Long wait times. Whose work is constantly delayed because they’re waiting on something from another person or part of the process?
High stress levels. Who is totally overwhelmed and shoving chocolates down their shirt?
Defects can also do damage to a production line but for different reasons. A defect occurs any time something gets through a step in the process with a shortcoming or imperfection. Like a chocolate that got to the packing room unwrapped. Here are some signs of defects to look for in your business:
Poor quality. Whether it’s a work product or a new idea, are things getting through that never should have?
Constant mistakes. What and where are the most common issues that arise?
Low conversion. Are your marketing tactics, sales calls, or proposals actually producing the results that they should?
Once you find the weak links, now it’s time to fix things.
There are lots of methods out there for how to come up with good solutions to the problems you find in your business. I particularly like The 5 Whys Method. But regardless of how you do it, the point that I want to emphasize is to truly focus on solving one problem at a time. Your weakest link.
As your business grows, different parts of your process will become your weakest link. And once you fix one link in the chain, another will become the weakest, and you’ll focus on that one next.
Taking this systematic approach will undoubtedly improve your business. But more importantly, it will help you grow more quickly because you’ll always be investing your limited resources where they will have the biggest impact.
Don’t just take my word for it. Using this approach, I helped one company save $250,000 and speed up their cash cycles by 50% with this weakest link fix.
So do you feel like Lucy and don’t know how to get out?
Do you see weak links all over the place and don’t know where to start?
Are you growing and worried about things getting away from you before you’re able to do something about it?
If this is you and you need some help, let’s talk about it.