Episode Transcript

What’s up, guys? Welcome back to THE a.m.

So I’ve done the last two episodes. One I did, one about organization and being clean, and then the other one that I did, I’ve talked about time and how time is spent through whatever you’re focusing on. I did those two to really build up for this episode. So if you want, I’d recommend going back and listening to the other two. I hope give you some context about why I’m talking about this and where I’m coming from. And I want to start by saying this, one of the most important things you can do in life, whether it’s in business or life in general, is actually find the root of the problem.

So in business, there’s a concept called the Theory of Constraints. And the theory of constraints is where you find the actual problem which is causing and generating all these other problems, right? I talk about it being the root, the main issue, the actual foundational singular event or issue within the company or life that is causing a chain of effects, negative or positive, right? And so the theory of constraints, essentially, is this, you actually find the real bottleneck or the real problem, you solve that, and everything works.

So let me give you an example. There’s a munitions manufacturer. They got a government contract to manufacture, ammmunition, right? And they started working, and every month, they were falling behind schedule. So they increased production. They increased this, and they actually could not keep up with what they promised to produce. And it turns out that the problem wasn’t people on the assembly line. The problem wasn’t as many people as they needed. The problem wasn’t more staff. The problem wasn’t better assembly. It was actually busses. Busses, transportation was causing the failure in the production.

And so then let me explain how this happened, that the way that the I mean, the location where the ammunition factory was set up, was so far removed from society, it only had one bus that ran in the morning, one bus that ran in the evening. So what would happen is all the assembly line workers would leave 15 minutes early to get ready to go catch the bus, because if they missed it, they had to wait 12 hours for the next one? Well, it took away 15 minutes of production times 10 workers. And I’m pretty sure there’s more. That’s 150 minutes every day at every shift change. And the shift change happened twice a day, shift change, right? And then you have all the other workers coming in on the bus, and it also took them 15 minutes to get on the line. So you have a total loss of 30 minutes every 30 minutes every day in the assembly line, right? That’s why production fell behind.

So what they did was they just started adding more busses to come in, and delayed the bus schedule, or whatever it was, and then guess what? They’re able to meet their demands. Well, if you actually thought through like, oh man, why can’t we keep our promises and fulfill these things, your first thought isn’t going to be like, Oh yeah, busses. We need more transportation. No, you’re an ammunition company, right? For military government agencies. You’re not thinking busses. And so the reason why I’m saying that is it’s a really good example to highlight how just because you think something is a problem doesn’t actually mean it’s the real cause of the problem.

And so if you are spending all of your time and attention, it keeps going to the same place. You keep implementing remedies, right? You and and then that remedy is not solving the problem. The problem keeps repeating itself in that pattern. Guess what? That’s not actually the constraint. That’s not the root issue. The other thing is, when I brought up about being cleaned and organized. If you are cleaned and organized, if you are clean and organized, personally and in your business and in life, you are going to be able to identify root causes pretty quickly. The more orderly things are, the more easier it is to identify what is actually happening internally and externally, especially within a business.

And if you don’t know how to get clean and organized in a business, you better start cleaning up personally. You better start cleaning up in your life personally. And to get clean and organized, it’s so important to be clean and organized. And what does that mean? It means like, Oh, this is messy. Let me take three minutes and just clean it up. Not Oh, yeah, I always do dishes later, or I always do this later. It’s like, no, just in the moment. Okay, let me take a few minutes and clean this, right? Let me take a few minutes and do this.

And I think it’s so important that if you really want to solve real issues in your life, it takes time to focus on, one, the actual root, the right issue. And then two, being clean and organized helps you identify that. And then three, you actually got to think outside the box to identify those real issues to solve them. And this is one of the biggest skill sets, and most important skill sets in life, because if you get this down, you talk about being able to solve problems and move forward quickly in life or in business, or wherever you’re at, right?

For instance, it’s like this is. How most of the problems in life are solved. Like my wife and I were, like, cool. Let’s save more money on our budget. What are we doing? Wow, you know what? We cook, but we’re throwing away a lot of food. What if we just made this more efficient? How much more would that save us? And you know what, our grocery bill dropped. It wasn’t like, cool. Let me add another asset in my life and all these things, nope. It was just a simple answer.

So all that being said, I hope this really just leaves you with some good things to think about, about really finding the root cause of issues and then going from there.

Anyways, guys, I’ll catch you later. Peace.