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.
After the TOC ICO conference, I picked up Yuji Kishira's Wa - Transformation Management by Harmony, based on a conversation with him and other attendees. It is a fun take on Theory of Constraints, change management and other topics.
Why do businesses exist? What is their purpose? Can we identify just one thing? Steve Denning talks about Milton Friedman's statement that the sole purpose of corporations is to make money for its shareholders. The short form is that Friedman based his article on flawed logic.
The Fox News website has a nice summary of research into multitasking (task switching) and the impact it has on our ability to get things done. Always nice to have "official" outlets talk about this kind of thing. And I appreciate that they describe more of the nuance than simply "listening to music, doing homework, watching videos, and texting at the same time."
Drew Greenblatt, the president of Marlin Steel has a nice appreciation of Eli Goldratt on the Inc. website, The Man Who Saved My Company | Inc.com. (Yes, Eli Goldratt died two years ago.) He opens with the familiar struggle and goes on to talk about how he was able to pull his company out of the struggles with help from The Goal, and Theory of Constraints.