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 […]
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 […]
Team of Teams- A Systems View
Teams are at the core of successful work in organizations. Very few things can be accomplished by individuals. There is increasing talk about teams. Inspiring work has been done in military environments, as illustrated through the book Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal. But what is a team? How do you choose the members, and […]
Why Teams Need Synchronization to Achieve the Goal – A Systems View
How do we manage an organization to cope with complexity? It means understanding the organization as a system and seeing the interdependencies. Independence vs. interdependence What can the theory of systems tell us about managing organizations? First of all, if all the components that make up the system are independent, then the maximum result that the system can produce is simply […]
Quantifying the Business Value of Systemic vs Silo Management
A business leader recently asked us about quantifying the business value of a systemic approach to management. This is someone who completely understands that it makes much more sense to work in an integrated and collaborative way rather than within a “functional empire”. The question was, what can we say to people about the quantifiable […]
Supply Chain Management – Radically Improving the Process
No matter what a company does, it is inevitably part of a supply chain. It receives inputs and has to transform these inputs into something to pass on to a customer reliably. It’s an ongoing process, and like every process it can be improved. Today change is happening fast, threatening the survival of companies that […]
Why Business Education is Failing
Dr. Deming said it years ago – MBAs teach students to raid companies, not to manage them. In her new book Makers & Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business, Rana Foroohar, assistant managing editor at Time, points a finger at business education. She states that in spite of the increase in people studying […]
Variation and a Playbook for Organizations
As superbowl excitement rises, lessons can be learned from a team like the Patriots. They have the most systemic approach to football of any team and their consistent choice of players that other teams reject shows their dependence on their playbook, in other words, carefully mapped interdependencies that work towards achieving the goal. The team […]
Marketing Requires Knowledge and Method, not Techniques
There’s a lot of mystique and myth about marketing (and sales). What are they really? In this post we propose a solid, proven systems approach. Serious marketing leaves no room for improvisation. It requires thought, consistency and relentless effort. The methodical effort translates into consistent, monitorable results with built-in continuous improvement. Marketing is not a “company function” […]
Performance Optimization and Interdependencies: When 1+1= More Than 2
What happens when more than one person or more than one thing work together in the same direction? Is the result just the simple sum of their efforts? The answer to this question is yes, but ONLY when the elements involved are independent of each other. In the theory of systems, the global “performance” of any […]