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Any non-trivial program or project will require assembling resources and applying them in a coordinated fashion to the problem at hand. A question arises: where should the resources sit?

The instinctive answer may be to gain ownership and control of resources. It provides comfort and higher degree of flexibility. You may need to explain why you want a resource but you change what you want the resource to do at any time. Having ownership and control of all resources is not always the most cost effective option for enterprises. A “shared services” model may bring down costs and be better.

However, shared services bring their own challenges, a big one is creation of bottlenecks. Loss of control over resources means more effort is required to create a value case and experiments are going to be harder to carry out. As we all know, a camel is a horse designed by a committee.

Which one is “better?” The answer will take more time and space than this blog has, but for now, you need to be aware of where your bottlenecks are, and why they exist. Ownership is a big reason, but lack of skill is another. You may own the resources, but if you do not know how to apply them to solve problems, you’ve just created a bottleneck.

Watch this short video to learn why the bottleneck of the bottle is at the top. The point is, if you are a leader, the bottleneck might be you.