Chain Link Systems
In sixth grade, during the physics lesson, I learned that two objects cannot exist in the same space. Obvious, right? Well, Mr. Bunău (the physics teacher) just made obvious something that everybody instinctively knows. I certainly knew this, but didn’t put it into words and it was amazing for me at the time what a simple concept, how obvious, yet I didn’t think to formulate it in to words. This is why words mean things, putting concepts into words helps other people better understand your thoughts.
Since sixth grade I had many more moments such as the one described earlier, today it happened again while I was reading Richard P. Rumelt’s book: Good Strategy Bad Strategy.
There’s a chapter there named Chain-link systems. It briefly describes that in order to improve something, be it an entire company or even just a process, you’ll have to improve the weakest link first. Obviously: the whole chain is as strong as its weakest link. Doesn’t make sense to further improve the other, stronger, links, since the weak one will still fail first.
This of course got me thinking. This kind of approach is not new, at least I have seen it before in sports and self-improvement.
A sports analogy: say you can run a marathon, but very slowly. Clearly the area to work on is speed, since there’s the area you’ll get better, faster and will see most improvements, with greater ease. So it would make sense to improve your muscular mass and run fartleks or strides.
Wording this in a general way we get: you should optimize for the thing you can improve most at. This is where you’ll reap the most benefit. Doesn’t matter the activity you engage in, sports or purely intellectual.
Of course, apply this carefully in order to reach your goals. To continue the sports analogy: maybe your goal is to run an ultra, so you don’t need the speed (this is a bit reductionist and not really true, like all analogies it breaks down at one point, but bear with me). There are improvements to be made in everything, perfection is the enemy of done. This is why we have to pick and choose according to our (current) priorities and goals.
Maybe you to become a better public speaker, so you’ll have to improve at (one of the following chain-links) engaging the audience, keeping them entertained and properly adjusting the pace and content of the presentation to their level on the subject.
One thing that I have learned over the past several months is that its good to sometimes get out of your comfort zone, you’ll discover chain links that you didn’t know were there before.
Thumbnail photo by Matthew Lancaster on Unsplash