by How To Grow Substack

Slow down to speed up

Kingman’s equation is why your team’s getting wrecked

FEB 2, 2024

Share

You should be moving faster. Making more progress. Your team’s not executing with urgency.

But. Everyone seems busy, YOUR calendar is STACKED… but you’re still behind where you want to be.

And yet. There are founders & teams who are far less busy accomplishing more than you. They’re scaling, you’re treading water.

I feel this. My business should be moving much faster than it is. PMF Camp should be well over $2M in annual revenue by now. I should have far more newsletter subscribers, and a much bigger LinkedIn following. WTF?

I have been re-reading a bit on operations theory, and there’s a concept that’s lodged in the back of my mind.

As the utilization of a system approaches 100%, the system’s waiting time approaches infinity.

So says Kingman’s equation, a formula in queuing theory, which displays the exponential impact of system utilization on waiting time. It ain’t pretty:

“Hey Rob, this is moderately interesting, but why are we going into a rabbit hole on queuing theory?”

Because we’re all doing too fucking much. We look at our calendars and say, “ok, I am going to work 12 hours today, what are all the things I can accomplish in 12 hours?”

And we load up our work systems to 100% utilization. We want to be busy, we need to accomplish a lot of things!

Our teams follow our lead, and load up to 100% utilization too.

Which means there’s no buffer time, and as a result our company slows to a halt, and we accomplish nothing despite everyone being wildly busy.

Two solutions:

1. BUFFER. You want a maximum of 80-90% utilization. Schedule downtime. Get past the guilt of “not working right now.”
2. PRIORITY. Overutilization is usually a function of opacity – when it’s not clear what actually matters, we (I) operate like everything is important, and never stop working.

Move slower to move faster.

Love,

Rob

PS #1:

PMF Camp 2 is done! PMF Camp 3 is coming in April. If you’re pre-PMF, you should sign up for the waitlist. Save 3-6+ months of pain, unlearn BS startup nonsense, get clarity on the path to PMF, and work with me!

PS #2:

Shoutout to Tom Kerwin who sent me the awesome Innovation Tactics “pip” deck. Related – how cool of a business is Pip Decks. Wish I was that creative.

(No, I don’t do sponsored posts, but yes, send me free stuff.)