2024-01-15 17:08
Thorsteinn Siglaugsson has taken his writing and thinking about the “Logical Thinking Processes” from Theory of Constraints and compiled them into a booklet, From Symptoms to Cau… Read More
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Knowledge Jolt With Jack Blog
blog.jackvinson.com
This blog is about knowledge management, personal effectiveness, theory of constraints and other topics. Opinions expressed here are strictly those of the owner, Jack Vinson, and those of the commenters.
2023-11-22 14:58
The new book from Steven J. Spear and Gene Kim takes a look at what makes for winning organizations and develops what they call a new theory of performance management - why do some organizat… Read More
2023-11-16 00:04
I came across a recent CIO.com article on Why IT projects still fail that references a KPMG technology survey and interviews with some high-level leaders. While I was initially hoping for s… Read More
2023-10-17 14:52
We all make mistakes - big and small. But what do we do with them? How do we react? How do the people around us react? Mark Graban’s latest book, The Mistakes that Make Us: Cultivating… Read More
2023-08-11 22:04
Deming’s Journey to Profound Knowledge by John Willis and Derek Lewis is the story of how W. Edwards Deming’s background, education and experiences inspired him to develop his Sy… Read More
2023-07-07 17:26
Flying Saucer in Mars PA (from my files)
I’ve been catching up on some blogs, and came across one from Leandro Herrero on 3 Ways to Get Approval from your CEO or Leadership T… Read More
2023-07-06 15:25
Ayelet Fishbach’s Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation was an informative read, offering exactly what the subtitle suggests: interesting (surprising?) lessons… Read More
2023-02-11 00:23
I’ve heard Adam Lawrence on Lean-oriented podcasts (mostly Marc Graban’s Lean Blog) a number of times, talking about his “wheel of sustainability.” He has written a b… Read More
2023-02-09 19:19
Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling was written back in 1988. Does it still make sense? A group of people I work with decided to re-read it together and see if it still makes sense. The basics… Read More
2023-02-02 20:13
A new book from the Goldratt family! Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag has taken on the mantle of writing a business novel in the style of her father, Eli Goldratt. Goldratt’s Rules of Flow expand… Read More
2023-01-16 17:12
I picked up David McRaney’s How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion on recommendation from a colleague who somewhat-jokingly told us that he couldn… Read More
2022-06-03 19:29
Dentistry with a Vision: Building a Rewarding Practice and a Balanced Life by Gerald I. Kendall and Gary S. Wadhwa is a Theory of Constraints business novel, this time focused on dentistry… Read More
2022-04-27 14:49
It’s always interesting to see how people interpret disciplines - we all bring our own perspectives to the topic. I know I get things wrong, but it’s not a reason to stop explori… Read More
2022-04-19 19:45
I picked up The Myth of Multitasking: How “Doing It All” Gets Nothing Done by Dave Crenshaw on a recommendation from a colleague. It’s a nice quick read, and covers some f… Read More
2022-03-01 19:46
A Radical Enterprise: Pioneering the Future of High-Performing Organizations by Matt K. Parker is a curious book. It describes a vastly different way of working in organizations that enables… Read More
2022-01-11 18:31
I heard a different way to articulate conflicts today on a podcast* that might help shed some light or give some different language. Rather than thinking about the actions people want to tak… Read More
2022-01-06 16:19
Jamie Flinchbaugh has a new book out about problem-solving, People Solve Problems: The Power of Every Person, Every Day, Every Problem. The basic setup is reasonable - we all solve problems… Read More
2022-01-03 13:56
Graham Scott has written a nice, short book that feels like a conversation, incorporating the ideas of Theory of Constraints - focus and leverage: Practice Makes Profit: The small business o… Read More
2021-09-16 19:46
I picked up Cynefin - Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World just recently, though it came out last fall as a celebration of (at least) 21 years of the evolution of the Cynefin mo… Read More
2021-07-12 20:04
The Agile Uprising podcast has been running a “TOC renaissance” - or “TOC-aissance” series, and I am the fourth entry on my favorite subject of Critical Chain Project… Read More
2021-07-02 18:45
Noise: A flaw in human judgement by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass Sunstein tells a damning story about how much variability there is in the assessments we make as experts in our… Read More
2021-07-02 18:45
Long weekend in the USA. Enjoy! One nice thing about online conferences is that one can be in multiple places at once - thanks to recorded presentations being made available immediately (i… Read More
2021-06-29 14:31
The 2021 edition of the TOCICO (Theory of Constraints International Certification Organization) annual conference was held online last week in a now-familiar setup. The speakers pre-recorde… Read More
2021-05-27 13:08
A quick note of an article from Brad Cairns of the Center for Lean Learning, Where Lean Meets Theory of Constraints. In it he gives an overview of both Lean and TOC and how they can work tog… Read More
2021-05-18 14:42
I’m feeling a little zen today. You get what you put into the world - whether you want to think of this phrase as positive or negative, I really like the zen feeling of the statement… Read More
2021-05-07 17:16
Dan Heath’s Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen addresses a familiar challenge in our world: We seem to spend more time and effort fixing problems as they occur… Read More
2021-02-22 13:27
Having just read on psychological safety, I see the topic more and more. Building a Culture of Learning at Work from Adam Grant (based on his new book) talks about this directly. The founda… Read More
2021-02-03 19:58
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth by Amy C. Edmondson book has been out for a couple of years, and the idea of ps… Read More
2021-01-05 22:06
Johanna Rothman is a busy person with all the writing and consulting she does. How does anyone do it? With practical mechanism to manage themselves, others, and innovative organizations. Jo… Read More
2021-01-04 20:39
I was pleased to receive a review copy of Jonathan Smart’s (Better Value) Sooner Safer Happier - #BVSSH, as it was on my list after the DevOps virtual conference this October. I am un… Read More
2021-01-04 15:40
In many applications of Flow - project management, software development, manufacturing, supply chain management, sales pipeline - the goal is to get through the full process as quickly as po… Read More
2020-12-28 19:57
So you want to spend money, but it is difficult to figure out if its worth it. ` Or you’ve been tasked with calculating the Return on Investment (ROI) for a piece of equipment or under… Read More
2020-11-25 13:57
The TOCICO hosted an online Critical Chain 2020 conference this week. As it seems most online conferences are running, the talks themselves were pre-recorded and the speakers were available… Read More
2020-10-22 20:25
I had the great pleasure of attending the 2020 DevOps Enterprise Summit - Las Vegas Virtual last week. All the presentations were pre-recorded and the speakers were often in the ongoing cha… Read More
2020-09-14 15:46
In a discussion at Manager Tools, someone brought up the idea of time multipliers - either by deciding not do do things at all; changing how you do things; doing things easier; automating th… Read More
2020-09-08 01:40
I saw the HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict by Amy Gallo mentioned somewhere in their emails, so they did an effective job of marketing the book. It is a quick read, directly on topic. An… Read More
2020-08-28 12:54
My mother turned up a quote she thought was UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, but appears to be from American author Arthur Somers Roche: “Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling t… Read More
2020-07-30 21:53
A colleague has been reading and commenting about Leadership Is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say--and What You Don't by L. David Marquet, and it seemed like a good pick to read and… Read More
2020-06-03 16:07
MIT’s Sloan Executive Education program are doing a series of 30-minute webinars. The one this week was from Prof Nelson Repenning on “How Not To Manage In A Crisis – And A… Read More
2020-05-26 18:01
There are many ways to look at “systems” and even within the arena of “systems thinking,” there seem to be many approaches. One of the names that comes up often is D… Read More
2020-05-12 18:24
Ken Blanchard’s High Five is a blast from the past. It was published in 2001, on the heels of several popular management books like Raving Fans and The One Minute Manager and Gung Ho!… Read More
2020-05-01 11:10
Dan Markovitz’ The Conclusion Trap is an intentionally fast read - he suggests it is a manifesto on really defining problems. I heard about this book on Mark Graban's LeanBlog podcast… Read More
2020-04-18 17:34
In the opening to the Gemba Academy podcast with Jamie Flinchbauch on the 4Cs of Trust, they chatted about the topic of problem solving. I loved the sentiment they discussed - if you find yo… Read More
2020-04-17 13:02
Trust impacts almost any initiative, whether that is relatively small local efforts or big organizational changes. In low-trust environments, everythings seems to require more effort. And th… Read More
2020-04-10 17:43
Another newsletter this week pointed to this nice discussion of mental models and on Proximate vs Root Causes (Why You Should Keep Digging to Find the Answer) in particular. The short versio… Read More
2020-04-07 14:45
A lot of people struggle to identify the “real” problem they have.I do a lot of work with organizations in making changes. There is always a reason for the change - the problem… Read More
2020-02-07 18:04
All of our approval AND complaints about “modern life” are created by us - not by the pace or tools or requirements of modern life. We are the ones sending email, playing video… Read More
2020-01-22 03:03
“Decisions take too long” is a familiar refrain in many organizations. Is it always correct? This complaint arises from people who depend on those decisions. Sometimes they even… Read More
2019-11-11 15:43
I listen to the Gemba Academy Podcast, and a recent entry reflects back to a blog post from one of their contributors, Why Can’t We See the Financial Impact of Continuous Improvement?… Read More
2019-11-08 16:36
“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”
— VoltaireWe all love getting stuff done - the sense of accomplishment; the relief that it isn’t bugging us anymore; t… Read More
2019-10-08 21:24
Gene Kim has a new book coming out in November, The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data. It… Read More
2019-09-26 23:14
My friend, Johanna Rothman, gave me a copy of her new book (with Mark Kilby), From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams, as we share a lot of id… Read More
2019-09-12 13:59
The questions for technology from Eli Goldratt’s Necessary but not Sufficient (one of my reviews) - that I like to apply to just about any change effort - are a great way to think thro… Read More
2019-09-06 12:03
I have a regular search running for articles about Theory of Constraints. Often they are side mentions about an executive’s favorite book (The Goal) or that a company has used TOC. U… Read More
2019-08-21 21:27
No, I don’t want to give up on this topic. But I want to clarify something: Multitasking is an effect - a result of the system in which we find ourselves. In order to “stop mul… Read More
2019-07-30 17:51
Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow has been out for a while (published in 2011), and many of the topics within have been discussed in othe… Read More
2019-06-05 13:35
A colleague pointed to this Applying Theory of Constraints at Scale from the Lean Kanban United Kingdom conference in May 2019 by Tony Grout and Chris Matts from Microsoft’s Skype team… Read More
2019-03-22 15:10
I came upon Richard Sheridan and his writings only recently. He clearly loves what he does at Menlo Innovations, and this comes shining through in his… Read More
2019-03-22 13:39
Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now is a solid set of thinking on the topic (published about a year ag… Read More
2019-02-19 15:06
Someone pointed me to a recent (15 Feb 2019) New York Times opinion piece by Adam Grant, No, You Can’t Ignore Email. It’s Rude.Being overwhelmed is no excuse. It’s hard to… Read More
2019-02-10 18:31
Gary Klein’s 2013 book Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights is a good read, as I’ve found with his his other book… Read More
2019-01-24 16:26
“To err is human” is a well-known phrase. It generally references the reality that humans are fallible and imperfect. It comes from the longer quote by Alexander Pope, “To… Read More
2019-01-07 19:54
Mark Graban has written a great book on statistics, Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More. He focuses on Process Behavior Charts t… Read More
2018-12-19 04:18
I recently read a pair of books that talk about project management shifting into product management, particularly in areas of business where there is f… Read More
2018-12-03 19:04
I saw a comment from my friend Mary Abraham about John Tomkins and his approach to how people talk to themselves (and to one another). His book is Not… Read More
2018-10-31 15:23
HBR this month has a great article on Too Many Projects by Rose Hollister and Michael D. Watkins. The essence of the article is that organizations have far too many projects, initiatives, ef… Read More
2018-10-30 14:21
I do not proclaim to be an expert in DevOps, but it is certainly something I have been watching and keeping track of, given the work I’ve been doing. It is always fun to go look for d… Read More
2018-10-25 12:26
I thought the “internet era” started a while ago, but the ways of working are still catching up. This is a great list of the Internet-era ways of working from Tom Loosemore and p… Read More
2018-10-23 18:26
I picked up Kevin Kohl’s Addicted to Hopium - Throughput: Using the DVA Business Process to Break the Guesswork Habit after hearing him speak thi… Read More
2018-10-23 14:22
Another piece on dealing with collaborators and personal relationships from Adam Kahane in Strategy+Business, this time There’s No Such Thing as Difficult People. “… perha… Read More
2018-10-13 03:35
A colleague handed me a copy of The Startup Way (book website) by Eric Ries because it is being referenced more and more in the work she is doing - and… Read More
2018-09-11 17:50
“Automation is just the exercise of power, and unwise automation can do as much damage as wise automation can bring benefit.”
— Ernest Mueller at the agile admin (2… Read More
2018-08-06 18:31
I picked up Soon: An Overdue History of Procrastination, from Leonardo and Darwin to You and Me by Andrew Santella based on a podcast (but I don't reca… Read More
2018-08-03 18:09
I picked up the audio program Beyond the Goal by Eli Goldratt in my ever-growing library of Theory of Constraints materials. It is a recording of… Read More
2018-07-12 14:32
Adam Kahane writes When Your Team’s Path Forward Isn’t Clear, Carve It in Strategy+Business blogs that rings nicely for me. When we collaborate with diverse others ... we ca… Read More
2018-07-03 15:49
Gene Kim and John Willis recorded a set of conversations called Beyond the Phoenix Project to talk about the DevOps movement since the publication of T… Read More
2018-06-15 17:38
Clarke Ching has created a new book to try to help people understand what is blocking their work (or life?). The Bottleneck Rules: How to Ge… Read More
2018-05-25 21:55
Going into a long weekend in the United States, I came across John Rampton's list of 20 time management tips, Manipulate Time With These Powerful 20 Time Management Tips at Forbes. &hell…Read More
2018-05-21 19:13
My long-time blogging friend, Jim McGee, will be teaching a course on project management and has some thoughts on how to enhance the course this time around. Some of the things he is thinkin… Read More
2018-05-17 18:11
There's a nice video from Goldratt Consulting Brazil on a Betânia Lácteos case study. They are a dairy facing some pretty familiar challenges in supplying their market while dea… Read More
2018-05-16 11:59
I came across an interesting piece today in the Smarter Living column in the New York Times today, Micro-Progress and the Magic of Just Getting Started by Tim Herrera. Essentially, the… Read More
2018-05-07 23:00
The Theory of Constraints community has a number of useful tools to help people think through change: the Layers of Resistance and the Change Matrix. L… Read More
2018-05-02 05:40
TOCICO 2018 opened with a fairly full house for the plenaries. Nice to see a good crowd. And of course, the conference has been a firehose of information and ideas and great conve… Read More
2018-05-02 05:15
Henry Camp gave another interesting talk on "Gaining a Competitive Edge through Sufficiency - 10 Steps to Breakthrough Results". His focus this time was on the concepts from The Choice, whic… Read More
2018-05-02 04:54
Humberto Baptista led a thoughtful discussion on "The Elusive Nature of POOGI" (process of ongoing improvement). He had a lot of fun with the language and suggesting Eli Goldratt left more m… Read More
2018-05-02 04:01
Joe Cooper and Malcolm Neumeyer spoke about "Applying TOC to Enterprise Architecture: Gaining Focus". It was an education on EA and a nice view of the challenges they see in the discipline.T… Read More
2018-05-02 03:36
Sanjeev Gupta of Realization gave the opening keynote on the second day of TOCICO. The talk was billed as "The Rising Importance of TOC" but ended up becoming "Solving the Projects Problem:… Read More
2018-05-01 22:46
How do you think about embedding TOC and flow into everything you do? "Engineering Reality at WiseTech Global: Core Conflict – Friend or Foe?" from James Powell was a fun talk fro… Read More
2018-05-01 14:50
The lunchtime keynote was "30 Years of Success: TOC & Throughput Improvement at GM" by Jeff Miller (GM) & Kevin Kohls. I've heard elements of this story from time to time, but it was… Read More
2018-05-01 14:20
Steel companies have been using TOC in a variety of formats for many years. The steel industry is even featured in the TOC Insights self-learning program that were created in the early 1990'… Read More
2018-05-01 14:00
Yaniv Dinur presented some of the challenges experienced in work with a large engineering-to-order company, "FL Smidth: Engineering to Order – engineering, procurement, and production… Read More
2018-05-01 13:34
The first official day of the TOCICO conference started with a keynote from Kaoru (John) Watanabe talking about the long history of TOC implementations at Hitachi, "Enterprise wide TOC Imple… Read More
2018-04-30 12:32
The TOCICO conference this year started with deep-dive workshops on Sunday, much like the old knowledge "upgrades" that used to happen. I sat in on the Demand Driven: A Practical Worksh… Read More
2018-04-27 12:47
I always love it when I read one thing that relates to something else I've just read and conversations I've been having with people. Let's see if I can draw the threads together for a… Read More
2018-04-26 03:06
I'm thinking a bunch about environments where we have opportunities to multitask. And modern business is rife with them. Today, I'm somewhat inspired by a report out of the DevOps Enterprise… Read More
2018-04-25 02:52
Yep. Another article about multitasking - the evil beyond all evils. Well, okay, maybe not so strong. But people in many arenas crow about how dangerous it is. Including me. Many times. And… Read More
2018-04-04 03:33
I was browsing books and was pleasantly surprised to come across Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow by Dominica DeGra… Read More
2018-04-04 01:06
I first heard the term VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) five years ago when I started working with a client that epitomizes this view of the world. It's one of those term… Read More
2018-03-27 16:59
The TOCICO (Theory of Constraints International Certification Organization) is holding its annual conference in Las Vegas on the 30th April - 1st May with some pre-conference workshops on Su… Read More
2018-03-15 03:06
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
— Stephen HawkingI don't usually memorialize people, and I won't say much about… Read More
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