Tag: theory of constraints
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TOC for Admirals
Coincidentally, I was already pondering a post regarding this article when I was asked to help the Coast Guard Vice Commandant’s office with administrative workflow. In my experience, admirals (and I assume other executives) are very comfortable at operating within MIT’s political and cultural lenses. Though they give much thought to strategy and wouldn’t accept…
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CPI of CPI
You don’t have time to make things better. All you’re doing is just getting up every day and trying to avoid disaster. Daniel Norton The above quote from a recent MIT Sloan article resonated with me. I see examples each week of teams so busy trying to keep up with inbound requests that they don’t…
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TOC 101
This is bar none the best tutorial I’ve ever come across explaining the Theory of Constraints. The job of management is to determine the capacity of their bottleneck, fill it, and then allow no more projects to begin until one is completed. Tiago Forte I had an experience this week that reminded me how undervalued…
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Scaling down TOC
I came across another successful Theory of Constraints (TOC) implementation this week with the world I am most familiar: aviation maintenance. I applaud the Air Force for insourcing this type of consulting and their findings were no surprise: The root-cause analysis identified core issues with scheduling processes, poor communication and multiple competing priorities. Katie Scott,…
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Modernize Coast Guard Workflow Management
I submitted the following article to U. S. Naval Institute Press last year for their 2021 Coast Guard essay contest. This grew out of a challenge a mentor of mine gave me in 2016 to go beyond just leaving a passdown for my replacement and instead draft a white paper recommending organizational change based on…
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Friends
It’s an early winter evening in Connecticut, dark and cold. I’m walking from my college dorm to a lecture hall where Sebastian Junger and many of those featured in The Perfect Storm will speak. As usual, I’m walking with my best friend and his girlfriend. We do just about everything together and will one day be family. However, this night,…
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The art of control
Last week was a real bear. We are building our 2023 budget at work and since I view all of life through the lends of production it was exasperating to be a part of. Rather than an elegant process that is informed by high-level strategy, adjusted via feedback loops, and best supports those with skin…
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Top five books I’ve read
Books, check’em out… Like most teenaged boys I loathed reading the books that were assigned in school. With wrestling and Boy Scouts (and friends) as my main focuses, I didn’t have the time…or motivation. Cliff Notes were a fantastic short cut for a while, but the teachers escalated the bare minimum arms race and developed…
Patience and Humility 