The goal from Wliyahu M. Goldratt

 The Goal  from Wliyahu M. Goldratt

• productivity is meaningless unless you know what your goal is
• Does anyone genuinely understand what we're doing here?
• Cash-Flow: if you dont, nothing else matters. Its a measure of survival: stay above the line and youre okay, go below and youre dead
• Throughput
• Inventory
• We are always talking about the organization as a whole - not about the manufacturing department, or about one plant, or about one department within the plant. We are not concerned with local optima
• a part in the orga can be superb and super efficient - if it doesnt increase througput / output it worth nothing - you just shift backlogs and inventory
• "Just pay me the value of what you learn from me" - a consultant
• The goal is not to reduce operational expense by itself. The goal is not to improve one measurement in isolation. The goal is to reduce operational expense and reduce inventory while simultaneously increasing throughput.
• Processes fluctuate. These accumulate throughout a process. And mostly it's an accumulation of slowness
• Balance flow, not capacity
• The idea is to make the flow through the bottleneck equal to demand from the market
• The whole system can only be as fast as the throughput of the bottleneck
• "But we have a union to deal with" - "So talk to them. They have a stake in this plant. They are not stupid. But you have to make them understand"
• When you make a non-bottleneck do more work than this machine, you are not increasing productivity
• Since we cut batch sizes, work is flowing through the plant more smoothly than ever! SMALL BATCH SIZES
• Common Sense is not common at all
• Way of leading to the answers through asking questions ("Socratig approach")
• Dont give the answer, just ask the questions.
• We re-engineered the deal. We came back with a counter-offer that was feasible and that the client liked even more than his original request.
• Almost every big company is oscillating every five to ten years from centralization to decentralization, and then back again
• When you dont know what to do you can always reshuffle the cards - reorganize
• Culture change - from "cost world" to "throughput world"
• Process of ongoing improvements
• Steps:
• 1) Identify the systems bottlenecks
• 2) Decide how to exploit the bottlenecks (bring bottleneck itself to maximum throughput)
• 3) Subordinate everything else to the above decisions (everything marches to the tune of bottleneck)
• 4) Elevate the systems bottlenecks (Improve throughput through measures outside bottleneck)
• 5) if a bottleneck has been broen go back to step 1
• Or
• 1) Identify the systems constraint(s)
• 2) Decide how to exploit the systems constraint
• 3) Subordinate everything else to the above decision
• 4) Elevate the systems constraint(s)
• We must put our finger on the core problem, on the root that causes them all
• The problem is that the time it takes material to be converted to a finished product, ready for delivery to the client, depends more on the time it has to wait in queues and not so mich on the touch time to process the order.

Authentic and productive

We call a brand or a person authentic when they're consistent, when they act the same way whether or not someone is looking. Someone is authentic when their actions are in alignment with what they promise.

Showing up as a pro.

Keeping promises.

Even when you don't feel like it.

Especially when you don't.

Storytelling

Imagine: Instead of saying "I have a dream", Martin Luther King would have started his speech differently: "I was reflecting on the options of a reciprocal perception of racial issues". His speech would probably never have gone down in history as one of the most important.

Not making a decision is a decision too

A lot of problems happen because of your internal state. When you're calm, happy, and fulfilled, you don't pick fights, create drama, or keep score.

“We need very little in life to make us happy, provided we have the frame of mind to enjoy whatever we have.”

The secret race - Taylor Hamilton

•  Its not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog.
• Instead of focusing on himself, he focused on the motives and credibility of his attackers.
• In a meeting call the one attacking out: "Why do you want this / point this out?"
• Here's another pattern I later noticed: whenever anybody emphasized how safe something was, it often turned out to be the opposite.
• The press didnt understand that our job was to throw the kitchen sink at the test, to cast its credibilitiy into doubt. (Law, I was discovering, works like bike racing: try everything, just in case it works.)
• I learned that if youre vague enough, you dont have to lie
• I learned that if you repeat something often enough, you begin to believe it.
• that old saying that when god closes a door he opens a window.