Random Thoughts!!!

#4. The Goal

Recently I read The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eli Goldratt and Jeff Cox. I should have read it ages ago, but as they say “Its Better Late than Never”. It’s a thought provoking account of a plant manager trying hard to make his plant productive and come out of the red. Along the way, he is fraught with multiple challenges. At almost every step, he is assisted by an old friend, who prefers to use Socratic method to help the protagonist think critically and arrive at answers to his problems, both personal and professional. This helps the protagonist to see flaws in traditional concepts and allows him to turn those concepts upside down in small steps. What I liked most in the book is that it is written as a gripping novel, which keeps a sustainable pace and urges the reader to think differently about her/his own work and life.

Ok, enough of the book review! A question is still lingering in my mind. Was this just another story with a happy ending? I read and hear that this book is very successful with over 4 million copies sold. The First Edition came out in 1984 and it is now running its Fourth Edition. Although the main plot is about applying Theory of Constraints (ToC) in the Manufacturing industry, there are some success stories mentioned in the last few pages, where other industries have benefited using the same concepts. If this is such a useful and beneficial concept, probably the whole world should have embraced it by now. But how often do we see organizations struggling with getting work done on time and within acceptable quality?

What is it that’s preventing today’s organizations from applying such useful concepts to their day-to-day work?

#2. Two Siblings

My elder kid Nishaad (10 years) is a happy-go-lucky boy, an extrovert personality, always talking his mind out. Very good at solving Math problems, he has even grasped the Pythagoras Theorem at this age :). He has a lot of friends and obviously has a lot of fights, but doesn’t keep grudges. He breaks into a dance at the slightest provocation. Usually he cannot concentrate on a single activity for long, and doesn’t have any particular hobby to talk about.

The younger one Risheet (6 years) is an introvert boy, mostly keeping to himself. Although he also has many friends, but doesn’t like to talk about them. He seldom forgets about the fights he has with his friends. Good at creative skills like drawing and assembling engineering toys, he can sit for hours together engrossed in these activities.

As diverse as chalk and cheese, when they come together, you could see the affinity they have for each other. Call it sibling-love or bonding, I am yet to figure out the common thread which binds such two different personalities together.

Can a similar bond exist between members of a same team? What is it that creates a bonding between two individuals coming from diverse backgrounds and who are inherently different from each other?

#1. Closed Minds

In my career of more than 18 years, I got a lot of opportunities to attend training sessions, workshops, informal meetups and other public forums both as a participant and in recent times as a facilitator. One common thread in all these, was a mix of people who came with different expectations and varied understanding of the subject. While some listened attentively and tried to grasp as much as possible, there were others who simply seemed disinterested. Another observation was that some people, although attentive, didn’t participate in discussions while others expressed their views, opinions, questions and experiences very openly.

In many one-to-one conversations, team discussions, town-hall meets and other occasions, how often do we come across people who come prepared to not listen? It seems like they lock their minds with some huge padlock and misplace the key. People with such closed minds have difficulty in engaging with a larger group. More so, the larger group finds such people hard to get along with.

Last weekend, I co-hosted a meetup on the topic “Agile Adoption vs. Transformation” along with my friends and colleagues Ashish and Vineet. There, I encountered a closed minded personality, prompting me to think about the reasons why anybody would exhibit such a behavior. There can be multiple reasons, but there’s a larger question associated with this. Where do we find the key to open the padlock which has closed someone’s mind?

#3. Fresh Fish

Here’s an interesting story; many of us would have read it earlier.

The Japanese have always loved fresh fish. But the waters close to Japan have not held many fish for decades. So the fishermen had to go further out to sea to catch their supply of fish, the fishing boats got bigger and bigger.

The farther the fishermen went, the longer it took to bring in the fish. If the return trip took more than a few days, the fish were not fresh and they lost their fresh taste.

To solve this problem, fishing companies installed freezers on their boats. They would catch the fish and freeze them at sea. Freezers allowed the boats to go farther and stay longer. However, the Japanese could taste the difference between fresh and frozen and they did not like frozen fish.  Also, the frozen fish brought a lower price. So fishing companies installed fish tanks. They would catch the fish and stuff them in the tanks, fin to fin. After a little thrashing around, the fish stopped moving. They were tired and dull, but alive. Unfortunately, the Japanese could still taste the difference; because the fish did not move for days, they lost their fresh-fish taste.

The Japanese preferred the lively taste of fresh fish, not sluggish fish. So how did Japanese fishing companies solve this problem? How do they get fresh-tasting fish to Japan? To keep the fish tasting fresh, the Japanese fishing companies added a small shark to the tanks that the fish were kept in. The shark of course eats a few fish, but most of the fish arrive in a very lively state due to the fact that the fish are challenged.

The fish see the shark as a challenge and they try to overcome this challenge by continuously keeping away from the shark, eventually to get eaten by some human :). Well, that’s not the point of narrating this story here. The fishing companies did some remarkable thinking. And they didn’t stop experimenting till the problem was solved completely for them to reap the maximum benefits.

More often than not, we also face similar situations in our personal and professional life. If these fishing companies benefited by their continuous experimentation, it really makes sense for others to explore such a problem-solving technique. I am wondering what deters us to take our challenges head-on and not rest till we overcome them.

Parting Thought...

There should be some answers to these questions cropping up in my mind; I guess it will take some time for these answers to take shape. Till that time, I’d be glad to know your comments and learn more from your experiences. Thanks for reading these random thoughts...

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author's current or previous employers.