Everything works. Nothing moves.

In 1921 a naturalist measured a column of army ants that had walked into a perfect circle. Twelve hundred feet around. Two and a half hours a lap. They carried their eggs the whole way, because they believed they were moving house. Every business writer since has told that story wrong.

Operations rarely fails the way you were warned about. It fails while every step is defensible, every person is working hard, and every process is functioning as designed. There is no incident to review and nobody to manage out. There is just a company that is extremely busy and has not moved in three years.

This book is about how that happens, why the people most likely to be trapped in it are the best ones you have, and what it takes to see a closed loop from the inside.

What is in it: why the ant mill story is wrong and what the 1921 source actually says. Four tests that detect a closed loop from inside it. Why showing people works and telling them does not. What it costs to be the one who breaks the loop. And a page listing what was cut during the writing, and why.

Every quotation in this book was checked against the primary source rather than a summary of it. Where the evidence is strong it is named. Where the famous study does not say what everyone claims it says, that is named too.

Volume I of Principles of Practice, published by the National Board of Operations Professionals, a standards body for business operations practice.

Purchase of this book is not required in order to sit any National Board of Operations Professionals assessment and confers no advantage. The assessment is built from the published standard, not from this book.