Have you ever wondered why it’s so hard to make sense of the real capacity of your delivery ecosystems?

I think it’s because capacity in that context is invisible and flexible. Huh? 🤔 👇

That’s right, capacity can be:

Visible OR Invisible
Fixed (non-expansive) OR Flexible (expansive)

▶️ Examples of ‘Visible and Fixed’ Capacity:

• A parking lot with marked spaces. Try parking two cars in space 37. • Your cooktop with four burners. Try cooking with five pans. • An airplane with assigned seats. You can’t put two people in seat 4C.

▶️ Examples of ‘Invisible and Fixed’ Capacity:

• Your internet speed, or network bandwidth—the limits exist, but you can’t see them. • The power grid’s capacity to deliver electricity.

▶️ Examples of ‘Visible and Flexible’ Capacity:

• Buses or trains with a seating capacity, but during rush hour, more people can squeeze in. • Elevators that occasionally hold more people than their stated capacity. • Conference rooms with movable chairs that stretch the limit.

As for Invisible and Flexible capacity, this is where humans 👯🧑‍🤝‍🧑 come in:

Our Cognitive Capacity
Our Emotional Capacity
Our Creativity and Problem-Solving Capacity

Managing capacity when it’s Visible and Fixed is much easier. But it gets tough when capacity is invisible and flexible—like when humans collaborate toward shared goals.

In dealing with that complexity, we often oversimplify it by (sometimes mistakenly) associating capacity with something we can measure—like headcount.

Have you seen that happen? How does your organisation make sense of capacity? Let me know in the comments below!