The Bottleneck Person
They're not hoarding power. They're drowning in it. The organisation funneled everything through one point because that point was reliable. Now that reliability is the constraint.
One who seeks no ease in good times builds resilience for hard times. Valluvar warns against complacency. But your organisation built a different kind of vulnerability. The organisation stops when one person stops. Not because they’re irreplaceable. Because the system was built to flow through them. Every approval requires their signature. Every decision requires their input. Every escalation lands on their desk. They’re not hoarding power. They’re drowning in it. The organisation funneled everything through one point because that point was reliable. Now that reliability is the constraint.
Accenture restructures like other companies hold town halls: regularly and with diminishing impact. I counted five major reorganizations between 2014 and 2024. Each one promised ‘clarity and client alignment.’ Each one moved the same people into different boxes on a new org chart. Employees developed what internal surveys called ‘restructure fatigue,’ the inability to take any structural change seriously because the next one was always 18 months away. The addiction to restructuring is indistinguishable from the fear of committing to a structure.
Flow restricted to a single pipe narrows everything. In hydraulics, a bottleneck occurs when a wide flow is forced through a narrow pipe. The flow rate is determined not by the capacity of the system, but by the narrowest point. Organizational bottleneck persons work identically: the organisation’s capacity is determined not by the team’s ability, but by one person’s bandwidth. The pipe doesn’t know it’s the bottleneck. It just processes flow as fast as it can. But the system upstream is waiting, and the system downstream is starved.
Identify the person who, if they disappeared for a month, would create the most damage. That person is the bottleneck. Start redistributing one of their functions this week. Not because they’re failing. Because the system is fragile.
That single point of failure has a name. The Bottleneck Person. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Untie The Knot
Uproot
The bottleneck formed because the person was reliable and the system rewarded reliability by routing more flow through them. The organizational response to good performance was to add more load.
Navigate
No single person is required for more than three decision categories. Functions are distributed across multiple capable owners.
Tool
CORE / Evolution: the growth framework that identifies single points of failure. Evolution asks: if this person disappeared for a month, what would stop?
Implement
Identify the person whose absence would cause the most disruption. Redistribute one of their functions this week. Not because they’re failing. Because the system is fragile.
Emerge
When flow is distributed, the organisation gains resilience, the bottleneck person regains capacity, and the team discovers latent talent that was hidden behind the queue.