One of the key differences in his thinking is that management attention is the constraint.
While your bottleneck may move around, the only reason it moves or that you even have an internal bottleneck is because either 1) you’re not paying attention; and/or 2) you’re not focused on dealing with it; and/or 3) you’re not taking the right actions.
So the issue is one of focus (at least initially). Most management teams are not working on the right things and waste a lot of time doing what really doesn’t make a difference, most of which doesn’t need to be done.
A management team will be effective if they do the things that need to be done and don’t waste time doing what doesn’t need to be done, shouldn’t be done or multi-tasking between too many things. Doing the latter is what consumes all your time and leaves you little or no time to do what should be and needs to be done.
So, here’s my advice.
1. Understand what you need to be focused on to meet your goals. I’m assuming that you ARE clear on your goal.
2. Focus on that and nothing else (stop multi-tasking and stop your people from multi-tasking).
3. Get’er done, one tactic at time.
If you are not sure of any or all of these – get yourself one of those TOC consultant types. A good TOC expert can get you focused, help you figure out how to stay focused, and get you set up with the right strategy and tactics (specific actions to take) to achieve the results you’re after.
And the return on this investment should be fast and substantial. If you are not sure what your next step should be, contact me for a free 1 hour strategy session. There’s no charge, we’ll see if we can get you pointed in the right direction.
Wishing you success,
Dr Lisa
President, Science of Business, and your favorite TOC Consultant Type!
P.S. FOR CUSTOM JOB SHOPS ONLY: The next Velocity Scheduling System Coaching Program is starting soon!
P.P.S. Want to get your pricing right (and make a lot more money?)? The Velocity Pricing System is the ONLY TOC-BASED PRICING SYSTEM (not costing system) specifically for JOB SHOPS!
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I’m head of sales department in company. From my point of view constraint to achive goals is lack of knowledge of sales force. We are establish training project for next six months which will be later upgraded with regular continuously training program. Stay focus!?
At same time We get task that we must in next three months significantly change commision system for sales force with main goal: “To rise attractiveness to sale to new customers and significantly drop down commision costs for renew sales to existing customers – two third of diference will be paid to sales force if results under botom line will go up?
Do we practice Multi-tasking Aproach to achived goal or we have to stay focus!?!
Silvo,
I also found your comment in my spam folder so I apogolize for the delay in responding.
I’m not sure if you are making a statement or asking a question. If you have a question can you please clarify?
Boy, did this catch my eye. I’m slammed today so I can’t think it out, but yeah, for 20+ years I’ve known a hlighy automated and efficient business card printer (an odd business I assure you) that’s WAY optimized, high volume, using Goldratt. And then 15 years ago I met the smartest guy I know, major process geek and brilliant thinker, and he too espouses Goldratt.Now I have thinking to do over the weekend. I imagine part of that thinking is in the background, but I haven’t brought it to the fore. Great post.Dave
I’ve read TOC material for years. It still hasn’t clicked for me. If I were in manufacturing I believe I can apply the principles (constraint, dbr). However, I work in information technology and applying TOC to information technology (tech support, programming, data warehouses) seems to me to be problematic. The only application to use would be CCPM (critical chain project management). The thinking tools are still a mystery to me. I understand the concepts but actually building the trees (transition, future reality, current reality, pre-requisite, evaporating clouds) has been very difficult for me. Any suggestions on how to get it? TOC is like learning a new language. It seems to me there is point where one gets an aha moment. Thoughts?
To really get TOC it can help to do JIT learning. If you wanted to apply CCPM or use the Theory of Constraints thinking process tools — just start using them. When you run into a problem or something that you don’t understand — ask for help at that point. Then you will have a very specific question that can be answered, something you have intuition on and is meaningful to you, and therefore an opportunity to learn and really understand.
Dr Lisa
Excellent writing Dr Lisa, to be shared. “focus is critical but not enough”(or how would you put it in few words?). Thank you.
Hi Petri,
Yes, focus is critical but not enough. Once you know what to focus on, you still need to know what to change to and how to cause the change.
Dr Lisa
Shock on our Monday morning by your email.
I am "emptying" myself to try to re-read the whole picture. If Eli said one at a time, I think I need to cut the "one" in pieces for learning then assemble them in one to work.
Even hard time is still happy time!
Good stuff Dr Lisa. Now if we could just figure out how to keep Eli focused on thinking! {grin}
-ski