This Focused Performance Weblog is a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective. TOC is noted for its applications in Project Management and Multi-Project Management (Critical Chain) and Operations Management (Drum-Buffer-Rope), as well as in Marketing, Strategic Planning and Change Management (TOC Thinking Processes). If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Friday, December 31, 2004
More About Reading Business Books -- Steven Holt of Boeing is a regular contributor to various TOC-related email discussion lists. He recently wrote the following, which he has given me permission to quote in full, since the list's archives is not link-friendly...
Some time ago I began to see what might be called the Goal Syndrome--there seem to be people who believe that they completely and totally understand TOC from reading The Goal and nothing else. They can point to all sorts of things that aren't in that one book and conclude that TOC is flawed for not including them.
I've been trying to come up with analogies to this.
Lean Syndrome: People who have only read The Machine that Changed the World by Womack and conclude that Lean is only applicable to the automotive industry.
Letter A Syndrome: People who get the "free" introductory book for a set of encyclopedias and, consequently, know everything there is to know about subjects starting with the Letter A. They point out that there is more to life than things starting with A, therefore the encyclopedia must be wrong.
The I've Never Seen it So it Must be Impossible Syndrome: I ran into this one years ago working a process improvement issue. After days of resistance from a team member, he finally said that he had worked in the industry for many years and had never seen anyone do what we were proposing, therefore he concluded that it must be impossible to do. And, if it was impossible, we shouldn't waste our time trying to do it.
This should be contrasted with the "It's All in the Book" Syndrome: this one is from first time project managers who get a copy of the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) and attempt to implement EVERYTHING in the book on their project.
We all begin with the first book and learn about the Letter A and soon after we discover that there's a lot of interesting knowledge that starts with other letters, too. Likewise, there's so much more to TOC than what's in "The Goal."
Solid advice that applies to more than just TOC. Thanks, Steve.
View Frank Patrick's profile
