This rather chance occurrence started my 30 year search for the holy grail of organizations, to understand their processes, to be able to diagnose what caused their underperformance, and to learn both effective adult education and group process strategies that would enable me to impact change. What I was after was to be able to know that my interventions would ultimately drive competitive advantage.
In my practice I have worked across a wide range of sectors including health care, insurance, aerospace, tier 2 and 3 in the auto sector, aluminum rolling and extrusion, specialty chemicals, and plastic molding and extrusion. This journey has taken me across 3 continents.
Over this period my work became very specialized, focusing on manufacturing and resulted in the development of a software firm called pVelocity. Check them out at www.pvelocity.com. In 2005, I turned back to my consulting roots.
While this broad experience allowed me to develop some of the swagger I so admired, each step up the learning ladder raised a new set of issues that needed to be tackled (and made the swagger a little less comfortable).
This personal struggle has fostered a life long learning experience, that I would like to share, in a series of chapters. This is the story of my search for that secret code book that could drive organization change, drive customer value, and drive shareholder value.
This secret code never materialized but it did turn into a search for development of The Art of The Bull’s Eye.
Consulting 101
I started my consulting business in 1980. My first 10 years of practice focused on a bouillabaisse of skills and technique...process, socio-tech, strategy and change. I knew I was a good process consultant but not enough seemed to stick and it was painfully slow. I had read all the prerequisite books, done the NTL thing and struggled with how to take those great principles and apply them. My clients were happy. I was growing increasingly uncomfortable. I was searching for something. I didn’t yet know it was the Art of the Bull’s Eye.
In 1989 I read Goldratt’s book The Goal, which developed Theory of Constraints or better known as TOC. It was like getting a blood transfusion. It came at a good time, because to be honest I was starting to doubt whether I really was making any difference. I began to rethink my practice.
TOC
Essentially TOC within a manufacturing organization provides systems theory with a focus. It defines the bottleneck, the key element or component in the system and how the ‘constraint’ interacts with its important but less critical partner components.
I still believe that this book is a must read for anyone in manufacturing and although it is almost 40 years since it was written it is as relevant today as it was then. I devoured all the rest of Goldratt’s work even if I can now admit at times I had no idea what he was trying to say.
Over the next 5 years I applied the TOC technology to my practice with success. Find the bottleneck, focus on it with both technical improvements and team based improvements and drive productivity. The constraint or bottleneck should of course be the most expensive and time consuming machine in the production line. (it isn’t always, but that is just poor plant design). But, again I became disenchanted. There was still something missing.
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1 The concept of yin yang (sometimes referred to in the west as yin and yang) is used to describe how polar or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how thy give rise to each other in turn.
