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In 1985, The Goal was introduced
into the market. Initially, it encountered a lot of skepticism
-- a management text book written in the format of a love
story? It will never be accepted.
That was the opinion of most "experts,"
but as usual, they were wrong. The Goal was not just
a book about a success story, it became a success story
itself! Read and cherished by CEO's and floor workers, by
hard-nosed professionals and housewives, its impact was
beyond my wildest expectations. Not only that, this "love
story" became mandatory reading in numerous universities.
It is probably one of the very few fiction books that turned
into an accurate documentary.
Hundreds of plant managers all over the
globe have identified so strongly with the hero -- Alex
Rogo -- that they have replicated his actions and thus his
astonishing results. Testimonials of those occurrences have
streamed in from all over in the form of letters, telephone
calls and numerous enthusiastic personal stories. And, they
still come in -- more than ever.
But these implementation efforts, along
with their tangible results, have exposed two major obstacles.
Obstacles that in almost all cases, have caused the companies
results to plateau and sometimes even decay. It turned out
that any improvement, no matter how big, is not sufficient.
Only a process of ongoing improvement can sustain a company's
excellent performance in the long run. Sounds quite trivial,
but its ramifications are far from being trivial.
Very quickly it became evident that The
Goal is not providing what is actually needed. The
Goal provides brilliant simple solutions when what is
really needed is the process that will enable management
to generate such solutions on their own. Moreover, The
Goal may have highlighted, but certainly did not address,
the major problem of changing the nature of a company. Changing
it to the extent that change itself will become the norm,
not the exception.
This is certainly a psychological problem
that requires not just the know-how of dealing with the
psychology of individuals, but more important and more difficult,
the know-how of dealing with the psychology of the organization.
This book is written in the attempt to deal
with these two major questions: what are the thinking processes
that enable people to invent simple solutions to seemingly
complicated situations? And, the question of how to use
the psychological aspects to assist rather than impair,
the implementation of those solutions in a mode of an ongoing
process.
Realizing full well that this book, if it
is to be effective, must be studied and not just read, I
hope that The Goal will be of help as a vivid illustration
of the generic methods described here.
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