TOA: Hi folks, welcome back to Ask The Business Bro, and apologies for being a little late this time. Unfortunately, our good man didn’t quite show up on time for this edition and we had to delay the start time. What happened?
BB: Well, unfortunately, I was delayed multiple times on my commute, and the various little issues adding up on my journey proved too much to overcome.
TOA: But you just mentioned before we started that you thought it was good thing you showed up late?
BB: Right, well, I think it’s a good example of what we discussed last time in terms of positive and negative fluctuations not quite evening out.
TOA: OK, explain.
BB: Well, I started the commute by leaving right on time, but then I remembered that I’d forgotten my train pass, so I went back to my building to retrieve it. That meant I walked out the front door ten minutes later than I’d intended. I caught a cab and cut eight minutes off my usual thirty-minute walk to the train station, but I still missed my train by two minutes.
TOA: OK, so you were running two minutes late at that point?
BB: Well, from the point of view of the first portion of my commute, yes, but the real variable here is the actual time I boarded the next train. The trains run every fifteen minutes, so it was fifteen minutes later than I’d intended when I boarded the train.
TOA: OK, so by being two minutes late, you became fifteen minutes late.
BB: Right. The train ran smoothly and I arrived at the connecting subway station without hassle. I usually have to wait five minutes for the subway but as luck would have it the next one was pulling right in as I stepped onto the platform so I was able to board the next subway right away. I got to your station ten minutes later than usual, and then I ran here to cut my ten-minute walk in half.
TOA: And that’s why you were five minutes late.
BB: Exactly.
TOA: So what does this have to do with last week?
BB: The key idea is that my fluctuations didn’t accumulate evenly. I was ten minutes late to leave my apartment but this delay cost me fifteen minutes in the context of the trip because I had to wait for the train. So, even though my initial delay was ten minutes, the way this fluctuation accumulated meant I lost an additional five minutes.
TOA: The cab was obviously a good idea, but didn’t work.
BB: Right. You could compare that to a company rushing production at the end of a tough week. I paid a cab driver to help make up for the initial delay just as you could pay your workers overtime to work over the weekend but it wasn’t enough. I ended up late anyway, and at a higher cost.
TOA: And the same kind of thing on the next leg of the journey?
BB: Yes, the trip from my station to your station was five minutes faster because I cut out the wait for the subway. But even though I’d saved eight minutes on the trip to the first station and an additional five minutes on my trip to the third station, the thirteen minutes of savings still hadn’t made up for the first ten minutes I’d lost.
TOA: And then you sprinted here, which saved five more minutes, but even though you’d saved eighteen minutes overall to make up for an initial ten minute loss you were still five minutes late. So, in a way, you needed eighteen minutes of extra effort to make up for a five minute loss, and yet you still came up five minutes short.
BB (squirming in his seat): Ouch.
TOA: The math makes your head hurt?
BB: No, I think I might have pulled a hamstring while running.
TOA: Wow, are you OK?
BB: I will be, but I need to stretch first.
TOA: Maybe we should pick this up again a little later.
BB: That’s a good idea.
TOA: Let me summarize this, though, just so I get it. Basically, the production process for any organization is like your failed commute, there are so many connections and dependencies that a minor fluctuation in one link of the chain impacts everything downstream in ways disproportionate to the initial fluctuation.
BB: Right. Because of these dependencies, a minute lost in one part of the process doesn’t automatically mean you need to make up a minute elsewhere – it could be two minutes, ten minutes, whatever. If I were lucky, it would have been zero minutes. It’s really impossible to say.
TOA: That’s complicated, but I can see it better due to today’s example.
BB: A far simpler way to put it is that you can be infinitely delayed for anything but you can only be early up to a certain physical limit.
TOA: I’m not sure that’s much simpler.
BB: Well, if you call me at one and invite me over for dinner that night, I could show up an hour early, but not a day early. On the other hand, I could be late by a day, two days, a month – it’s really unlimited.
TOA: I’m not sure anyone is going to be impressed if you show up three weeks late for dinner.
BB: Are you going to let me rest, or not?
TOA: You know what’s funny about you pulling a hamstring?
BB: What?
TOA: In running, a pulled hamstring is usually a good sign that you overdid it somewhere along the way.
BB: What would you know about running?
TOA: A lot.
BB: Oh right, you’ve done those long, boring posts about running, I remember now. Those posts were so boring. I’d rather run myself than read those posts, you know.
TOA: Right. Well, what I’m saying is that an organization that has to increase its effort above a certain threshold risks the equivalent of a pulled hamstring.
BB: Well, I don’t know about that.
TOA: OK fine, I’ll let you rest. We’ll be back soon.
