AI Bottlenecks & The Overweight Boy Scout

In The Goal, Eliyahu Goldratt tells the story of a scout troop on a hike.

The book was written long before ChatGPT.

But it still explains why AI isn't paying off for so many companies, and what to change so it does.

In the story a plant manager named Alex Rogo gets roped into leading the hike. He watches the line stretch out.

Fast kids up front. A growing gap.

And somewhere in the middle, a kid named Herbie.

Herbie is the slowest hiker in the troop. Ahead of him, the trail is empty. Behind him, the whole troop bunches up.

Speeding up the fast kids wouldn't help. The line would stretch. The gaps would grow. The troop still arrives when Herbie does.

So Rogo does two things.

1. He puts Herbie at the front of the line, so the troop stops spreading out.
2. He opens Herbie's pack, finds it stuffed with cans and gear, and splits the weight among the faster kids.

Herbie speeds up. And the moment Herbie speeds up, the whole troop speeds up.

Every workflow has a Herbie.

And it will only move as fast as he does.

This is a big part of why so many companies are seeing no benefit from AI.

They're speeding up many parts of their workflows with AI.

But it doesn't matter.

Herbie keeps slowing them down.

Examples:

• The salesperson who AIifies proposal writing while deals pile up waiting on demo calls.
• The developer who generates code in minutes while the constraint is code review.
• The marketer who drafts five posts a day while the bottleneck is the one person who approves them.

If you want AI to increase output in your business, you have to find the Herbie.

Don't look for what feels slow. Look for where the work piles up.

The queue is the fingerprint of the bottleneck. Wherever work sits waiting, the step right after it is your Herbie.

Put all your effort into speeding Herbie up.

If your Herbie is a person, you don't push them to go faster. You open their pack.

Take some of their work and hand it to the faster people. They have the time. They're the ones stuck waiting.

Once Herbie is no longer your slowest step, you have a new Herbie. Put your energy there.

Each time you do this, the whole line moves faster.

Find Herbie. Lighten his pack. Repeat.

This is how you ride the AI wave, instead of getting washed away by it.

Let me know what you think.

And thanks for reading.

Dave