Unconstrained Thinking
— The Leverage Point
At the 2000 TOC World conference, Eli Goldratt suggested that there are two basic ways of thinking about improvement. The first can be related to Ben Franklin’s old saw, “A penny saved is a penny earned,” and that a lot of saved pennies can accumulate to a significant sum. The second goes back to Archimedes of ancient Greece, who said “Give me a place to stand and I can move the world,” referring to the multiplying power of a lever, and of a well-placed leverage point.
Anyone who’s worked with a shovel and a wheelbarrow knows the difference. To move a couple hundred pounds of whatever, one can use a shovel and a lot of effort to walk back and forth from the source to the desired location a couple dozen times, dropping and dribbling the material on the way. Alternatively, one can stand in one place, build up a good rhythm shoveling into a wheelbarrow, take advantage of the leverage of the handles and wheel it to where you want it in one trip.
So the question is, when one thinks about a continuous improvement, why does shoveling pennies come to mind rather than a well-leveraged movement of the world? Why do we settle for nickel-and-dime improvements spread across the organization rather than insist on truly significant results from our efforts?
It’s probably because we’ve grown up hearing Ben Franklin more often than Archimedes. It’s probably because most of us have been most comfortable dealing with pieces of our organizational systems rather than taking a system-wide view to find that powerful leverage point. We erroneously assume that big results require big efforts or risks. But as Archimedes suggests, a modest effort can lead to not so modest results.
And once we’ve levered that first big move, what is there to stop us from moving the lever to a new fulcrum point and doing it again. In this way, we can institute a true process of ongoing significant improvement.
©2000, Frank Patrick |
| Find the essence of each situation, like a logger clearing a log jam. The pro climbs a tall tree and locates the key log, and blows it, and lets the stream do the rest. An amateur would start at the edge of the jam and move all the logs, eventually moving the key log. Both approaches work, but the essence concept saves time and effort. Almost all problems have a key log if we learn to find it. - Fred Smith |
This is one of a series of columns on improvement, TOC, constraint management, change management, systems thinking, uncommon sense, and whatever else comes into my mind. Suggestions for topics are welcome. - FP, 908-874-8664 or via the contact page of this site.
If you are interested in using these 1/2-page columns for your APICS, ASQ, or IIE newsletter, let me know through the same channels, and I'll send you the more easily usable MS Word versions.
-- Frank Patrick
Related links:
Unconstrained Thinking Index |
