Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock sit down with Steve Pereira, founder of Visible Flow Consulting, to talk about something most organizations get backwards: the obsession with efficiency at the expense of actual flow.
Steve works with large companies to improve operational performance through value stream mapping and continuous delivery. But the conversations he keeps having aren't about cutting costs. They're about untethering capable people from the systems that are quietly holding them back.
In this episode, the three dig into why high utilization is often the enemy of good work, how lean thinking applies to knowledge work without losing what makes knowledge work different, and why adding AI on top of a broken system just makes things break faster.
If your organization feels like it should be doing more than it is, this one's worth your time. And if you want all 4 takeaways, don't miss the last few minutes of the episode.
This week´s takeaways:
- Step back from the work to look at how the work works. Whether it's a value stream mapping session or a quiet moment of reflection, intentional distance helps you see not just whether the saw is dull, but whether you're sawing the right tree.
- High utilization is not efficiency. Running people and teams at full capacity removes the slack needed to respond, adapt, and make good decisions. Optimal is closer to 80 percent. The rest needs to be budgeted, not eliminated.
- Understand your system before adding new tools. Whether it's AI, automation, or the latest framework, bolting new capabilities onto a system you don't fully understand tends to make existing problems worse, not better. Map first. Then act.
Extra Resources:
📖 Tools of Flow by Tody Goldratt: https://www.goodreads.com/es/book/show/75304520-goldratt-s-rules-of-flow
