While working with a client at their plant last week, our Founder, Dr. Domenico Lepore, told the dramatic story of his visit to a German aluminium plant, part of a multi-billion, multi-national business. The General Manager had invited Domenico to visit and give a presentation after hearing him speak at a Theory of Constraints (TOC) […]
The One Principle You Cannot Ignore for 21st Century Business Success
There is one universally valid principle that no business can ignore to achieve success and sustainable growth, highlighted in the following extract from the business novel ‘The Human Constraint’, www.thehumanconstraint.ca bought in 40 countries so far. May looked at her notes again. She had to get things right for the article about the new way that […]
How to Manage Time Constraints and Prioritize Tasks
If you’re looking for a way to prioritize your tasks and increase your productivity, and most of us are, you can take some powerful inputs from the Theory of Constraints. Every day, we all have to perform a number of tasks in different areas of our lives. Clearly, we can’t give equal attention to everything, […]
Ensuring Growth in the Digital Age: Looking at Retail
The speed of the change that digitization is bringing is dizzying. It is forcing companies to think hard about the very meaning of the way they do business. Old models are no longer valid and businesses need to catch up fast or lose market share and opportunities. Consolidated experience that had a high value suddenly […]
Three Steps to Optimal Performance in Any Organization
There are three steps that allow any organization to achieve optimal performance. Before we say what they are, let’s step back and understand one fundamental principle that affects how organizations get results. What happens when more than one person or more than one entity work together in the same direction? Is the result just the […]
The Human Constraint and Leadership Thinking
Our lives today are filled with unprecedented levels of rapid change and complexity. Unintended consequences can quickly emerge from inadequate leadership thinking, so we have an urgent need to learn to think in a “joined-up” way. The definition of ‘joined-up thinking” is: “thinking about a complicated problem in an intelligent way that includes all the […]
Biggest Challenge? Not Technology but the Organization Design
A truth is beginning to emerge about how reality is shifting in organizations. It was voiced clearly in a presentation yesterday by the CEO of a forward-thinking digital solutions provider in Italy, Stefano Righetti of Hyphen-Italia. The truth is this: no company will be able do without Digital Transformation, at least for its core processes. […]
Give Up Busy – Choose Productive
Being busy is considered by many to be a virtue. People may be giving their businesses 200% of effort. But in reality, being busy as you work through a shopping list of “to do” tasks can be the opposite of virtuous. How? Because it can lead to wasting time on the wrong things, unproductive multi-tasking […]
Seeing the Big Picture of Management with the Theory of Constraints
Due to the global success of Dr. Goldratt’s first business novel ‘The Goal’ most people mistakenly think of TOC as just a technique for manufacturing. While TOC does produces fast and radical improvements in manufacturing processes, it is in fact a whole system philosophy and method. The thinking that underlies this theory stems from a worldview […]
The Importance of Understanding “Constraint” for 21st Century Organizations
Today’s post looks at ways to understand what “constraint” means for an organization and why we need to identify it and manage it in 21st century organizations. This is an extract from the business novel + website, The Human Constraint. May opened the window of her apartment to let in some fresh air. The morning was […]