In Praise of Bottlenecks

A reappraisal of the enemy of industry

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“Humans are always the bottlenecks,” the start-up leader told me, with the tone of someone sharing an inescapable scientific fact. “What I want to figure out is: How do we remove the human bottleneck from the process entirely without sacrificing quality?”

We were talking about his efforts to automate editorial processes for the purpose of creating more content, faster. He wanted to build a media brand but with as few humans as possible – ideally, none.

Setting aside how bleak I found all of this – and my actual response to this query, which, suffice it to say, didn’t seem to land – this phrase kept repeating in my head after the conversation: Humans are always the bottlenecks.

The unquestioned assumption in this statement was that bottlenecks are always bad, something to be eliminated. The friction that stops innovation, productivity, efficiency.

What we forget: centuries ago, the bottleneck was itself an innovation. Before the term “bottleneck” became synonymous with corporate inefficiency, before it became an enemy of capitalism, it referred to a new design that allowed people to both store and pour liquids more effectively. When it was invented, the narrow bottleneck and spout required less cork (which was used to plug the bottle and keep it from spoiling), and to better regulate how much came out, which was helpful especially for expensive contents.

Sir Kenelm Digby, a 17th-century English knight, courtier, astrologer, alchemist and philosopher, is also known as the father of the modern wine bottle. Digby led a colorful life¹, to say the least – alighting on an early theory of photosynthesis, serving as a founding member of the Royal Society, and even killing a French nobleman in a duel and serving prison time for it. In his 1669 writings on bottling and preserving spirits – The Closet Opened – he writes: “If the spirits be not well imprisoned... they will soon fly away and leave the body dead and insipid.”

Digby argued that the narrow neck of the bottle, which allowed for a tighter cork seal, was critical to maintaining the quality of the beverage. It gave the spirits the right balance of compression – not too much that the spirit evaporated, but not too little that the gases would break the glass. Ancient, wider-mouthed ceramic vessels (also known as amphorae) accelerated wine spoilage and made it difficult to transport. The longer neck and stronger glass made the fermentation and carbonation process easier to regulate.

Back to our modern era. What does all of this mean?

Digby was writing about liquid – not exploring philosophical questions about the importance of friction to quality in an age of AI. But his words invite a metaphorical extension: Without slowing down and thinking critically about what we’re pouring into the world, we risk sharing too much, too soon, of something that could be vile.

Don’t get me wrong: fermenting wine is not the same as fermenting ideas. I’m not saying human bottlenecks are always a good thing. It can be very frustrating when you’re trying to accomplish something and the only barrier is one (overworked, overwhelmed) person rubber-stamping it. Sometimes, the “bottleneck” is hiding something more systemic. The management expert Peter Drucker once remarked “The bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle.” What appears to be an efficiency problem could also, instead, be a leadership problem.

What I am saying is that we should question the impulse to banish anything, or anyone, that creates friction in both our personal and professional lives.

Instead, we could ask: What’s the purpose of this bottleneck? What do we lose when it goes away? Instead of smart and speedy, will we instead look foolish as wine explodes into our glass, overflowing and spilling all over the place?

1. It has taken a lot of restraint for me to not fill this post with strange facts about Digby, but I’ll tell you one more. One of his projects – which he wrote a book about – was pursuing the pseudoscientific development of a “sympathy powder.” The idea was that you could heal an injury not by putting the powder on the injury itself, but the weapon that caused it.