The Scary Blogging Bottleneck
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I recently had an epiphany while reading a classic 20 year old business book.A Would you like to hear about it?
1.
One of my all time favourite stories is about how King Leonidas of Sparta fought against the mighty Persian army of a million men with just 300 soldiers.A (The story was recently made into the movie 300. )
King Leonidas uses the “bottleneck” strategy.
How can a 300 person army prevail against a million soldiers?A By making sure that no more than 300 of the million can fight with them at any one time.A The Spartan soldiers set their camp on the one side of a very narrow cliff.A The Persian army has to go through the narrow pathway to reach Sparta.A But because the pathway is narrow, they can’t all of them walk through it together.A The narrow cliff gives the Spartans a chance to fight on equal footing.
And because the Spartans are better skilled at using the sword, score after score of the Persians die while crossing the narrow cliff.A While very few of the Spartans perish.
2.
Lets take the flip side: what would you do if you were Persian to beat the Spartans?
You have to neutralize the bottleneck.
Or you can’t proceed forward. A A
The Persians finally find a secret goat path to outflank the Spartans and surround them.A And win the battle.A But with unimaginable heavy losses.
3.
The book that led to the epiphany is: The Goal by Eli Goldratt.A Its the book that introduced the “theory of constraints” (bottleneck) to the world.A It teaches us: Deal with the bottleneck or you can never grow.
The book mainly deals with bottlenecks in production and manufacturing facilities.A But I tried asking the question:
“What is the bottleneck in my blogging ventures?”
4.
The answer:
Me!
I am the biggest bottleneck.A Because I am - for the most part - the only writer and marketer for this blog, and my time is limited - the success of this blog depends on how much time I can give to it per week.
Just as the Persians can’t move forward without outflanking the bottleneck, this blog can’t grow without outflanking me!
To that effect, you’ll be seeing a few changes to this blog over the next few months.A So that:
1. This blog has momentum of its own.A It attracts its own traffic.
2. The content of this blog is not dependent on me alone.
Do you face the same situation with your blog?A What is your plan of action?A Lets start a conversation… (I’ll be sharing what I do for this blog and 14 of my other websites with you too.)
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These are great thoughts. I have to agree that hte bottleneck is me, but I think I need to look deeper than that. Do I have too manyprojects? Do I stop short with strategies because I get distracted? Am I too motivated to try and earn income that I forget the basics of my readers & traffic? Great questions!
Posted 17 Oct 2007 #
For me it’s a mixture of letting go of certain projects that I believe in but just don’t have time for. For other projects that I can’t abandon, I’m outsourcing… that’s hard for a control freak. If only I could find the hidden goat path.
Posted 18 Oct 2007 #
14 Websites? I did not know that, Anke, I knew you were a busy man but that many websites. Wow.
One thing about the Persians is that they were ultimately defeated in the end, not at the “gates” but at the end of the war.
It is a great battle to study. There is another book, The Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield I believe, on the very same subject. When I read it, the one concept that appealed to me the most was not the fact 300 fighters killed millions of “Persians” (who were really a conglomerate of various armies the original army conquered and assimiliated into their own army).
It was the fact the mothers of Sparta will always produce more generations of fighters who would ultimately be raised to continue the tradition their 300 fathers died fighting for.
It does present an interesting question about the bottleneck, you can find a little known goat path to get pass the bottleneck and emerge victorious for the time being.
But at what cost? In the end, the mothers of Sparta continued to breed and raise future generations of fighters who ultimately drove the Persian out. Not right away, but in the end when the Persians realized they simply fell apart for their own good.
GREAT post, Anke! I always enjoy your insights and look forward to hearing about how you diffuse your bottleneck along with managing 14 websites. It will be interesting to see where the goat path is, is it found within this website or in one of your 14 websites?
Posted 18 Oct 2007 #
What an intelligent comparison - I love this. I’ve been thinking a lot about this too. Imagine a print magazine with only one writer - there may be one, but we’ve probably never heard of it because it would be nearly impossible to grow it large enough. Great magazines manage to keep their message and brand consistent, despite having a staff of hundreds or thousands.
I’m definitely looking forward to following your blog and learning more about you idea and how things progress with this blog and 14 other sites - 14! That’s amazing!
Posted 19 Oct 2007 #
I am not quite yet ready to have guest bloggers. I plan on beating the bottleneck by adding more tools to my blog. Tools that people have to come to my site to use.
Posted 01 Nov 2007 #
Have you seen the new constraints book for services? What a winner! Reaching The Goal: How Managers Improve a Services Business Using Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints
It’s written by a guy at IBM - opens up a new world to constraints.
Posted 08 Nov 2007 #
It goes well along with one of my favorite books “The 4 Hour Work Week” - it is the absolute conclusion of removing the bottle neck completely:
http://www.semmy.name/index.php/89/the-four-hour-workweek/
Meaning “taking yourself out of the equation”.
Yours,
Semmy
Posted 15 Nov 2007 #
Only 14 websites?
The key is to multiply yourself without overworking yourself and use leverage in outsourcing but also in total automation. Some of the blogging tools at http://www.massautomation.info help.
Posted 15 Nov 2007 #