The Novel As Teaching Tool
I’ve just finished reading a book about organizations and the Theory of Constraints (TOC). If you have never heard of the book it may surprise you to hear that it was written as a novel. That’s right, a novel, if The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt counts as such, and I think that it does.
I don’t know how you would classify this book in conventional terms. It doesn’t easily fit into any fiction genre; perhaps a new category of its own, or something as obscure as business management thriller? It is beside the point here.
The author, an Israeli physicist, chose this form to communicate a complex set of ideas, which at the time were pretty radical. It is the story of a plant manager’s battle to change the way his company’s policies and procedures had caused the plant to continuously miss targets and face shut down.
Telling A Story To Teach The Theory Of Constraints
Goldratt uses the narrative, written in the first-person, to illustrate the impact of constraints on production and the how selection of the wrong or right measurements will determine the ability of an organization to perform its intended function, without delays and overcoming bottlenecks.
The main character is the narrator, Alex Rogo, the manager of an industrial manufacturing plant under threat of closure. The story follows his journey of learning, applying the TOC principles along the way. Facing intense pressure at work and at home, Rogo turns to his former teacher, a physicist, with whom he had a recent chance encounter.
The teacher hints at having deep insight into the nature of Rogo’s problem and the key measurements and changes that will save the plant. This is, of course, the Theory of Constraints, as applied in an example. Their dialogue becomes a major thread that binds the book.
Story Best Communicates Concepts
Concepts include working to support the actual goal and not some abstract measure in isolation. These sorts of localized optimizations produce individual successes at the expense of the functionality of the systems a whole. Other concepts include the 80/20 Rule, which aims to provide the maximum impact for the least effort.
The story shows by example the nature of critical chains of activities in operations, alluding to how this works in project management. Also, how in a production workflow the permanence of one workstation is dependent on events upstream as well as its own performance characteristics; as such how the pursuit of local efficiency, removed from the system can actually be a distraction.
If you are working in any organization that is facing fundamental changes, brought on by technology or other sources of disruption, I recommend this book. Even though the first edition was released in 1984, it has been in print ever since. It’s a key reading source in the field of change management.
