Archives: Strategy
The 5-Step FOCUS – Collaborate Around the Constraint
While it may be desirable to be liked when asking people with whom you work to collaborate, it is not always necessary, and it is never sufficient.
The 5 Step Focus – Optimise the Constraint
All improvement is change, but not all change is an improvement. We can optimise sales, or marketing, or manufacturing, or supply chain, or HR, or IT. Indeed, you can optimise any subsystem of your organisation. But how will it affect your business outcome?
The 5-Step FOCUS – Find The Constraint
Constraints aren’t your enemy—they’re your friend. If you want the most bang-for-buck for your effort, despite the connotation of the word constraint, it’s precisely at that place you’ll find the leverage you’re looking for.
mediumThe 5 Step FOCUS – Identifying the System
In one of Eli Goldratt’s last essays, his introduction to the TOC Handbook, he wrote: ‘Can we condense all of TOC into one sentence? I think it is possible to condense it into a single word: focus.’
Six Questions to Judge Technology
How do we decide whether we should adopt a new technology? It needn’t be new to the world, but new to our organisation. After all, Peter Drucker noted that selling Eskimos a fridge to keep meat from freezing was a creative new use of current technology.
Act by Priority
Of all life’s gifts, time is the most precious. None of us escapes its clutches. As every minute ticks by, our quota is relentlessly reduced by that minute, then the next and the next. Prioritising how we spend our allotted time is one of our most consequential challenges.
