All tagged business novel
Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag has taken on the mantle of writing a business novel in the style of her father, Eli Goldratt. Goldratt’s Rules of Flow takes Eli Goldratt’s “Four Concepts of Flow” into project management environments and shows how some basic rules of flow can significantly reduce the chaos and improve results.
Dentistry with a Vision: Building a Rewarding Practice and a Balanced Life by Gerald I. Kendall and Gary S. Wadhwa is a Theory of Constraints business novel, this time focused on dentistry practice. As with many of these books, putting the story into novel form allows the ideas to develop and a “guru” to provide guidance in a more visceral form than one might get from a textbook or workbook.
The Myth of Multitasking: How “Doing It All” Gets Nothing Done by Dave Crenshaw is a nice, quick read and covers some familiar ground for people who talk about multitasking and the sorry effects of high work-in-process (WIP) for people and their businesses. The story is of working with a busy executive, rather than with a busy team, so it has some different takeaways than I have usually seen.
Graham Scott has written a nice, short book that feels like a conversation, incorporating the ideas of Theory of Constraints - focus and leverage: Practice Makes Profit: The small business owner’s guide to making more money by NOT working harder.
My review of Kevin Kohl’s Addicted to Hopium - Throughput: Using the DVA Business Process to Break the Guesswork Habit. The book is a fictionalization of the long history that Kohls has had in bringing Theory of Constraints and related approached to GM and other organizations. Kohls gives us the story of MegaCo and engineer Andrew Wright and their journey from barely being able to keep their heads above water to applying a strategic approach to improvement, thanks to the impetus of a guru in the form of a possible customer.
"The Incredible Transformation of Gregory Todd" by AJ Sheppard is an interesting take on the business novel with the guru character played by a young upstart, rather than a grizzled veteran or external consultant. There are a lot of good nuggets, but I missed an overall picture of how the transformation was accomplished.
"Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box" by The Arbinger Institute was a good and challenging read. I found it engaging with connections to ideas from Theory of Constraints that I have been exploring and using in my work. I also finished the book on Yom Kippur - a day of reflections - so I was thinking about my own assumptions around how I operate in the world.
Another good, fast read of a "standby" book on Theory of Constraints, technology sales and thinking about real business problems. One of the most lasting elements from this book is a way to think about technology in light of improving an organization: the questions for technology.
The larger Theory of Constraints community has been a great source of business novels over the past year. My latest find is The Human Constraint by Angela Montgomery. The story was compelling, and I thought the approach to talking about the formal process was very light-handed with just enough to make me curious to find more.
Clarke Ching's "Rolling Rocks Downhill" is a great business novel, primarily about TOC and Agile. I like how it combines a number of perspectives and shows how real value can be obtained in surprisingly short time horizons. That said, it helps when there is outside pressure.
"Pride and Joy" by Alex Knight is a Theory of Constraints business novel about a hospital in chaos and a way of thinking that can help move beyond the chaos to a truly patient-centric, high quality environment.
Eli Goldratt’s Critical Chain is another of his business novels, published in 1997 - about 10 years after The Goal. I have read the book previously, but apparently it has been much longer than I realized. There were elements here that I didn’t remember at all - most of the story line in fact.
My review of "The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win" by Gene Kim and gang. I enjoyed it, and ended up staying up late to finish it. The structure of the book is quite familiar: business novel; looming disaster; averted with the determination of the protagonist (and colleagues) and the help of a wacky "guru." There are some new-to-me concepts that fit neatly with my current worldview.
I read Bob Sproull's _Epiphanized_ in just a few days and found it told a gripping story of TOC transformation, even if the writing style was sometimes off-putting.
Another book in my long backlog was Ray Immelman's "Great Boss Dead Boss." I finally picked up a copy and thoroughly enjoyed it. As with many good books, the ideas have me looking at the world in a slightly different way.
I was sent a complimentary copy of The Imperfect Leader because I've been reading and reviewing a number of other business novels. As you might guess from the title, this one focuses on leadership.
My review of Simplifying Innovation by Michael A Dalton, a business novel that shows how Constraints Management principles can be applied to new product development and other areas that require a lot of innovation.
Death By Meeting by Patrick Lencioni is an entertaining and rather direct leadership fable on the importance of creating a good meeting culture. It's helpful for all sorts of reasons, but the key is that bad meetings lead to bad decisions.
Velocity is a business novel from the Theory of Constraints community with co-author Jeff Cox coming at TOC again after his work with The Goal years ago. This one introduces combined improvement efforts that are designed to set direction AND give you speed: Velocity.
I picked up Eli Goldratt's latest business novel, Isn't It Obvious, and absolutely flew through the book. The title of the book is one of Goldratt's favorite ideas: that the best theories are always seen (in hindsight) as obvious solutions.