Every part of your business is a system made up of separate but interrelated steps. And every system has a constraint—the weakest link in the chain.

According to the Theory of Constraints (TOC), fixing that weakest link is the fastest way to solve a complex business problem and achieve your goal.

How? By focusing on the broken link that’s limiting the effectiveness of the entire chain.

Imagine you’re in charge of a factory that manufactures iPhones. There are 25 steps in the assembly line, starting with the raw materials entering the building, continuing with parts being created and assembled, and ending with a shiny new iPhone.

Let’s assume that almost every step in that assembly line is working pretty efficiently. Not 100% perfectly, but well enough to keep cranking out new phones.

All except for the first step.

For weeks, the loading dock doors keep getting stuck halfway open, making it hard to move raw materials off of incoming trucks and onto your assembly line.

Step 1 (getting raw materials onto the assembly line) is slowing down every step that comes after it. Fixing this problem before spending time optimizing the other steps would immediately boost the output of the entire system.

Seems like basic common sense, right? And yet…

How many companies spend months building the “perfect” website—before they’ve even figured out how to generate any quality traffic?

Or spend months building the “perfect” product—before testing out a workable prototype in the marketplace?

Or spend months creating the “perfect” long-term organizational structure—before they’ve even figured out how to attract good candidates for the roles they already have in place?

None of this means that you shouldn’t try to build a good website, or make your product better, or plan ahead for growth.

Just don’t spend all your time perfecting the steps that come later in the process, until you’re sure that the earlier steps aren’t creating bottlenecks that slow down the entire system.

What will you do today to look at business problems from a constraints perspective?

Will you assess the productivity of each step in your “assembly line,” before investing your limited time and energy solving problems that may not make that much of a difference?