Constraint Labs

The Machine Always Tells the Truth

How Troubleshooting Mechanical Systems Taught Me to Run a Company
By Chuck Mobley

Discovering the Business Machine

I started as a mechanical thinker. I learned how to troubleshoot systems—electrical, mechanical, hydraulic. If something wasn’t working, you didn’t throw your hands up.

You listened. You traced the signal. You found the jam. Fix the jam, and the system comes back to life.

What I didn’t know at the time was that business works the same way.

Years ago, I was young, looking at our company’s P&L and comparing it to the bank account, and something didn’t add up. Profits looked fine, but the bank balance wasn’t moving. I didn’t know the term free cash flow yet, but I felt it.

I said, "It’s like a water wheel. There’s water in it, but it’s always moving. If we stopped it and settled everything, we’d see how much was actually there—but because it’s always turning, we never feel it."

That’s when it started to click. I could feel the system—before I had the words.

I once bought software to help analyze the business. It came on a floppy disk. Plugged it in, tried it out—and returned it. Why? It wasn’t a system. It was a form. So I built a spreadsheet. First one I’d ever made. And suddenly, I could see: inputs → outputs → results. Like wiring a panel.

That was the moment I realized – business is just a machine.

It has:

And just like a compressor or a control board, if you trace the flow and spot the failure, you can fix it.

Then I Found Theory of Constraints

The Theory of Constraints gave me the vocabulary for what I had already started to see:

  1. The main thing you always have to fix is the constraint.
  2. Everything else is noise.
  3. Throughput, inventory, operating expense: that’s the triangle. If you push one, it hits the others.

I took those ideas and built what I now call the Cash Machine—a diagram of how our business turns overhead into cash. I started seeing AR, AP, bank balances, and throughput like wires and valves.

Now, when people ask, "How do I learn how business works?", I respond with:

If you can troubleshoot a system, you can troubleshoot this.

Helping Others See the Gears

Recently, one of our employees said he wanted to learn how businesses work. He thought he might go back to school. I told him: "If you want a degree, I’ll support that. But if you want to learn how a business runs—we can teach you that right here."

Because the truth is, most schools teach business from the outside in. I’ve learned it from the inside out—from the flow, from the friction, from the constraint.

Business is a machine. The machine always tells the truth.

If you can learn to listen, you can learn to lead.
And if you can fix what jams the flow—you can build something that prints cash, retains people, and lasts.