Systems Thinking for Happy Staff & Elated Customers
summary
Claim: many separate pains trace to a few root causes and fixing those yields systemic improvement. Using Theory of Constraints and a current reality tree of cause‑and‑effect arrows reveals that deferring upgrades and incentivizing incident throughput makes upgrades costlier over time, incident volume rises, customers leave and margins fall. Empirical rule: above 80–85% utilization queues explode, so teams plan work to 40% capacity (reserve for learning and unplanned work). The recommended focus: stop chasing cost targets, prune the IT estate and reduce utilization to restore flow.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Start
- 10:04Few Causes Tend To Be Responsible for Many Effects Rather than the Other Way Around
- 10:58Recap
- 12:35Fishbone Diagrams
- 22:02Where Is the Common Underlying Cause
- 30:08The Cause and Effect Diagram
- 36:01Cross-Functional Teams
- 37:32Maximizing Staff Utilization Increases Throughput
- 39:50Summary
- 41:08Final Questions
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