E Goldratt - The Goal

Bob points to the white board and chuckles, "You call this mess knowing what's going on? Alex, come on. We all know that this nonsense of fact finding will continue until our committee runs out of ideas for gathering further facts."

"Or they run out of time," Stacey adds with a bitter smile.

"Yes, of course," Bob accepts, and turning to everybody he finishes his questions, "What do you think that we, acting as a committee, would do next? We know a committee can't submit this mess."

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They all laugh nervously. I'm really pleased. They've finally started to realize the problem that I'm facing.

"What are they going to do now?" Stacey muses. "They'll probably try to arrange this monstrous pile of facts in some or- der."

"Most likely," Lou agrees. "Sooner or later one of the com- mittee members will suggest organizing the shapes according to their relative size."

"I don't think so," Bob disagrees. "Determining the relative size of different shapes is quite difficult. They will probably de- cide to organize them according to the type of shapes." Lou doesn't seem to accept this, and so Bob explains, "They can ar- range the data by circles, rectangles, and stars."

"What are they going to do with those four arbitrary shapes?" Ralph asks.

"Probably they'll be put in a class of their own, the excep- tions."

"Yes, of course," Ralph agrees. "The major reason for the constant reprogramming are those exceptions that keep popping up."

"No, I have a better idea," Lou says stubbornly. "They'll probably arrange them by color; in this way there will be no ambiguity. Tell you what." He continues when he realizes that Bob is about to object, "Let's arrange them first by color, within color by shape, and within each subclass we'll arrange them by size. This way everybody will be happy." Count on Lou to find an acceptable compromise.

"It's a marvelous idea," Ralph picks up the ball. "Now we can submit our findings in the form of tables and histograms. It will be a very impressive report, especially once I pump up the graphics package. Minimum two hundred pages, guaranteed."

"Yes, an impressive, in-depth survey," I say sarcastically. We all sit silently, absorbing the bitter lesson we've just taught our- selves.

"You know," I say after a while, "It's much worse than just wasting time producing useless, pompous reports. This overcon- cern about the 'proper way to arrange things' manifests itself in other harmful ways."

"What do you mean?" Lou asks me.

"I mean the merry-go-round that we're all too familiar with; arranging the company according to product lines and then

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changing it according to functional capabilities-and vice versa. Deciding that the company is wasting too much money on dupli- cated efforts and thus moving to a more centralized mode. Ten years later, we want to encourage entrepreneurship and we move back to decentralization. Almost every big company is oscillating, every five to ten years from centralization to decentralization, and then back again."

"Yeah," says Bob. "As a president of a company, when you don't know what to do, when things are not going well, you can always shuffle the cards-reorganize." Mockingly he continues, "That will do it! This reorganization will solve all our problems!"

We stare at each other. If it weren't so painfully true, we might laugh.

"Bob," I say at last. "This isn't funny. The only somewhat practical ideas I had in mind for what I should do as the new division manager were all based on reorganizing the division."

"Oh, no," they all groan.

"O.K. then," and I turn back to the white board, which is not so white any more. "What is one supposed to do with this pile of colored shapes, except to arrange them in some order? Dealing directly with the pile is obviously totally impractical. Arranging the facts according to some order, classification, must be the first step. Maybe we can proceed from there in a different way than writing reports or rearranging the company, but the first step definitely must be to put some order into the mess."

As I continue to look at the board, a new question starts to bother me; "In how many ways can one arrange the assembled facts?"

"Obviously, we can arrange them by color," Lou answers.

"Or by size," Stacey adds.

"Or by shape." Bob doesn't give up on his suggestion.

"Any other possibilities?" I ask.

"Yes, of course," Ralph says. "We can divide the board by an imaginary grid and arrange the shapes according to their coordi- nates." When he sees our puzzled looks he clarifies, "It'll give us the ability to construct many different arrangements based on the shapes' relative position on the board."

"What a great idea," Bob says sarcastically. "You know what, I'd rather use the dart technique-throw a dart and start arrang- ing the shapes according to the order in which we nail 'em. All

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these methods have just as much meaning. At least my last sug- gestion offers some satisfaction."

"O.K. fellows," I say firmly. "Bob's last suggestion has really clarified what we're dealing with here. We're dealing with the fact that we haven't got any idea of what we're doing. If we're just looking for some arbitrary order, and we can choose among so many possibilities, then what's the point in putting so much effort in collecting so much data? What do we gain from it, except the ability to impress people with some thick reports or to throw the company into another reorganization in order to hide from the fact that we don't really understand what we're doing? This ave- nue of first collecting data, getting familiar with the facts, seems to lead us nowhere. It's nothing more than an exercise in futility. Come on, we need another way to attack the issue. Any sugges- tions?"

When nobody answers, I say, "Enough for today. We'll con- tinue tomorrow-same time, same place."

"Well, anybody got anything good, any breakthroughs?" I try to start the meeting off as cheerfully as possible. It's not ex- actly how I feel; I spent the whole night tossing in my bed, searching for any opening, which I never did find.

"I think that I have one," Stacey speaks up. "Not exactly a breakthrough, but..."

"Wait," says Ralph.

Ralph interrupting. That's new.

In an apologetic tone he explains, "Before we go off on a different angle, I'd like to return to where we were yesterday. I think we were too hasty in our decision that classification of data can't lead to something good. May I?"

"Sure," Stacey says, almost in relief.

"Well," Ralph fidgets, apparently uncomfortable, "as you know, or maybe you don't, I minored in chemistry in college. I don't know much about it, but one story stuck in my mind. Last night I looked back at my notes from class and I think you'll find it interesting as well. It's a story about a remarkable Russian named Mendeleev, and it happened less than one hundred fifty years ago."

Noticing that he grabbed our attention, he becomes more confident. Ralph is a family man and has three little children, so he's probably used to telling stories.

"Right from the start, in the days of ancient Greece, people postulated that underlying the phenomenal variety of materials there must be a simple set of elements from which all other sub- stances are composed."

As he gets into his story his voice becomes rich with under- tones.

"The Greeks naively assumed that the elements were air, earth, water and..."

"Fire," Bob completes the list.

"Correct," says Ralph.

What a wasted talent. He's a real story teller, I think to my- self. Who would have suspected it?

"Since then, as you know, people have proven that earth is