Goldratt’s Rules of Flow

Today I want to share something that has transformed the way I look at projects: the rules of flow. These rules come from Eliyahu Goldratt’s work, and they are as relevant to construction as they are to manufacturing or any other complex system. They focus on fixing real problems, eliminating waste, and ensuring that people and resources are used in the most effective way possible.

The first rule is to avoid bad multitasking and control your work in the process. On a project site, it is tempting to chase every open area or jump on every opportunity to get something done. But spreading crews across too many tasks at once eats up capacity. Equipment like forklifts, cranes, and hoists get overused, management attention gets diluted, and the team loses focus. Even if it looks like progress on the surface, it creates hidden waste. The discipline is to stay focused on what is truly needed, limit work in process, and protect the flow.

The second rule is to verify the full kit before starting. You would not expect a craftsman to begin work without their tools, materials, and information. Yet in construction, crews are often mobilized without everything they need. This leads to delays, frustration, and rework. Full kit readiness means ensuring that information, approvals, layout, and materials are all in place before work begins. Like a Minecraft chest that has every item needed to build, a complete kit is the key that unlocks flow.

The third rule is triage to ensure the right priorities. In healthcare, triage means treating the most critical patients first so the hospital does not collapse under its workload. On a jobsite, triage means focusing on the most urgent bottlenecks rather than spreading energy evenly. The bottleneck defines the pace of the project. If you resolve that constraint, everything else improves. Leaders must be willing to make tough calls, assign resources wisely, and focus on the priorities that truly drive outcomes.

The fourth rule is to ensure synchronization between tasks, people, and resources. Construction is a team sport, and it rarely goes smoothly when departments or trades operate in isolation. Synchronization means aligning the work of multiple groups so that handoffs happen cleanly and the overall system moves forward together. Sometimes this requires shifting people away from one area even if it slows local progress, because the bigger priority is optimizing the whole. A jobsite where everyone works at 100 percent capacity without coordination is far less effective than one where resources are balanced in service of overall flow.

The fifth rule is to increase the dosage when problems repeat. In construction, we often treat symptoms rather than causes. If the same issue arises over and over, adding more temporary fixes only hides the waste. Increasing the dosage means committing more effort to preplanning, preparation, and problem solving. Instead of sending crews to clean up messes or work overtime, invest the time and focus upfront to prevent those issues from recurring.

The sixth rule is to avoid unnecessary rework by finding and addressing the root cause. Every time rework happens, it drains resources and morale. Leaders must resist the urge to patch problems quickly and instead step back to ask why they occurred. Root cause analysis allows us to eliminate the underlying issue and protect future flow.

The seventh rule is to standardize when improvising is costly. While flexibility is sometimes useful, too much improvisation introduces chaos. Standardization stabilizes processes, creates consistency, and lays the foundation for continuous improvement. As Charlie Dunn often says, improvement is the house that standardization built. A stable environment gives people confidence and makes innovation sustainable.

The eighth rule is to abolish local optimization and focus on global optimization. Suboptimization happens when departments or trades try to maximize their own efficiency without regard to the overall system. It may feel productive in the moment, but it harms the project as a whole. Global optimization means directing resources to bottlenecks, aligning with overall priorities, and judging success by the flow of the entire project rather than individual output.

When I look back at my own career, every major breakthrough I experienced in construction tied back to understanding flow. From learning at the Bioscience Research Laboratory to reading Goldratt’s The Goal, these principles have consistently reshaped the way I see projects. They cut through complexity and simplify the focus: avoid distractions, prepare fully, prioritize wisely, synchronize efforts, eliminate root causes, standardize where it counts, and always optimize for the whole.

Construction does not have to be a struggle against chaos. By applying the rules of flow, we can build projects that are more efficient, safer, and more rewarding for everyone involved. These rules are not theoretical. They work on real jobs, with real people, and they deliver real results.

Key Takeaway

Flow in construction is created by focus, readiness, and alignment. When we stop multitasking, prioritize bottlenecks, and optimize the whole, projects move faster and smoother.