Justus von Liebig came up with the law of the minimum. While studying crop growth, he concluded that it doesn’t matter how many nutrients you provide the plant for growth, it will always be limited by the scarcest nutrient.
Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve spent an extraordinary amount of energy and resources, only to find that it did not move the needle for you as you would have hoped for?
Situations like that can arise because we have not addressed the limiting factor, which has an impact on the overall performance of any system.
This is actually great news, because we don’t need to worry about every single element in a system. We need to focus on the limiting factor.
The limiting factor is singular, which means it helps us focus on the essence.
While we often might focus on sideshows, the limiting factor is the main event.
The limiting factor can be anything from
- Sales skills
- Focus
- Making decisions
- Embracing uncertainty
I found that identifying the limiting factor for ourselves is quite simple but not easy. How do we find out what our limiting factor is? More often than not, it is this:
Our limiting factor is what we avoid.
Our limiting factor is often something we find uncomfortable and once addressed, it can substantially move the needle for us.