Find the constraint before choosing the growth project

01Choose an outcome you can observe

“Grow the business” is too broad to diagnose. Pick a customer outcome and a bounded stretch of work. For example: help a suitable buyer obtain a clear quotation, move an accepted order into delivery or complete an onboarding without repeated requests for missing information.

State the start and finish. Decide whose experience you are examining. Mixing different customer types, offers or service commitments can hide the very problem you are trying to understand. A complex tender and a routine repeat order may need different maps.

Lean Enterprise Institute’s guidance recommends connecting a process map to customer needs and business goals, involving people who do the work, and checking records against observation.¹ The short map below adapts those principles for an owner’s initial investigation. It is not a complete value-stream analysis.

02Trace what happened, including the waiting

Select a few recent instances that the team can examine responsibly. Include an ordinary case and an exception if both are relevant. Follow the handoffs: what arrived, who acted, what they needed, when progress resumed and what the customer experienced.

Record waiting separately from active work. Ask whether a delay is a problem for this customer promise: some waits are necessary, agreed or outside your control. Also look for rework, abandonment and questions that return to an earlier stage. A process can appear fast while repeatedly producing an unusable result.

Keep two columns in your notes: what was observed and what might explain it. “The quotation waited for a technical review” is an observation. “We need more technical staff” is one possible explanation. Missing specifications, unclear authority or an overloaded specialist could produce a similar observation and require a different response.

03Turn the suspected constraint into a testable question

A suspected constraint is a hypothesis about what is limiting this outcome. Write: “We think progress is limited at this point because of this condition. We would expect to see this evidence if that explanation is right.” Invite the person closest to the work to challenge it.

ASQ describes root-cause analysis as a family of approaches within wider problem solving; identifying a cause alone does not create an improvement.² Avoid declaring the first plausible explanation the root cause. If evidence is thin, the next step may be observation rather than implementation.

There may be multiple interacting constraints, and the limiting point can move. This map does not promise to find one permanent bottleneck. Its purpose is to make your next investigation or investment more deliberate.

04An illustrative map: enquiries arrive, quotations wait

Imagine a technical services firm considering a larger marketing campaign. It receives relevant enquiries, yet several prospects never receive a quotation. The initial explanation is that sales follow-up is weak.

Following recent enquiries reveals a different possibility: the estimator repeatedly asks sales for site details that were not captured at the first conversation. Sales then returns to the prospect, and work waits. The observation supports investigating the handoff; it does not yet prove that marketing or staffing is adequate.

A bounded test could use a short, agreed information checklist for one suitable enquiry type. Compare how often the estimator can begin without returning the enquiry. Also check whether customers find the additional questions confusing or burdensome. If progress does not improve, revisit the explanation. This is an invented scenario, with no claimed performance result.

05Define success and a reason to stop

Before changing the process, name the intended outcome, the person responsible and the condition that would make you pause. A faster handoff is not useful if it creates inaccurate quotations, additional risk or work that the customer does not need.

Use a measure appropriate to the question. You might record the number of handoffs needing clarification, elapsed time to a usable response or the reason a case stopped. Establish definitions so people count the same thing. Do not turn a handful of observations into a confident forecast of annual revenue.

Choose the test period and scope around the work’s normal rhythm. Keep the current process available where practical, and arrange a review with those affected. Record what changed and what else changed at the same time; otherwise a better result may be attributed to the wrong cause.

06When a small test is not enough

A serious capacity shortage, unsuitable offer or external market change may require a larger decision. A small process experiment cannot establish whether a market exists or remove a contractual restriction. In those cases, use the map to clarify what further customer, operational or professional evidence is needed.

Start with the worksheet below. If you cannot name an observed stopping point, examine real work before buying a solution. If you can name one, write the smallest responsible test that would help distinguish between the competing explanations.