All in theory of constraints
Sanjeev Gupta of Realization hosted a great conversation, describing his perspective on "what is TOC" (always an entertaining discussion) and what might be needed to improve the adoption of Theory of Constraints in business. The summary: TOC is not a philosophy. It is an operations management system based on three theorems.
Rob Newbold of ProChain (and author of a number of books on CCPM) has been thinking about updating the practice of CCPM around the planning and scheduling of CCPM projects. He presented four concepts that he's implemented, most of them seem reasonable. I don't know if they are all really needed though.
Justin Roff-Marsh has a serious passion for the sales function in business - reinventing and making it into a machine for growth. His talk at this TOCICO conference followed along this path.
Lisa Scheinkopf of Goldratt Schools discussed her thinking behind a different approach to bringing more and more people to learn TOC.
Eli Schragenheim presented on "Managing Under Uncertainty in the TOC Way," expanding on the idea that we should never say, "I know." Nor should we think, "I don't know." How do we use what we DO know to help deal with uncertainty?
How to break the global vs local conflict in organizations or systems that are very big (complex - or at least big enough that there is not time to fully understand the system).
One of the challenges all along for TOC Thinking Processes has been the perception that it is very focused on Logic without connection to the more "human" elements. It's not accurate, of course. Rami Goldratt discussed this in the context of Kristen Cox's morning keynote at the TOCICO conference.
Excellent keynote by Kristen Cox on her journey (so far) of implementing Theory of Constraints in the Utah state government, from her position as the head of the Governor's Office of Management and Budget.
Two useful, easy to consume versions of The Goal are available... One a book and the other a one-page comic.
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.
Break away from Groundhog Day of solving the same problem over and over. Dissolve the problem instead of merely resolving it.
I've seen many examples of end-of-the-month syndrome, but this example from Airbus is a great example of the same effect happening at the end of the year.
Don't block yourself because you think you know. There is always something to learn.
I see a lot of projects within business support organizations that look like "implement this tool." And then the organization is surprised when the project takes much longer than expected and the tool doesn't get used to the extent expected.
It's a short book, meant to be a quick read and guide to start thinking about thinking. Or maybe, more accurately, to get people doing something differently about thinking. The tone is light, but insistent - change the way you think to create fantastic new solutions.
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.
Kevin Fox's book, Aligned & Engaged, talks about creating effective teamwork in an organization. He provides 29 practices that will help any leader create more and more alignment and engagement in order to improve the bottom line.
More on time management and multitasking. It's a topic near and dear to what I've been doing for many years.
A quick anecdote from Realization's newsletter on "There is no such thing as good multitasking" and some thoughts around the idea.
In 7 Wastes That Impact Business Growth Jon Terry, one of the founders of LeanKit, presents a nice way of thinking through the Lean / Toyota Production System idea of waste and how one my think about it in the context of business growth in any type of organization.