Bill Dettmer's latest book - Giveaway!!!

Okay.  If you would like to win a free copy of Bill Dettmer's latest TOC book - which is very good, by the way - then leave a comment below which tells me something quite interesting you've discovered or experienced with TOC.  Don't forget to leave your email address (but probably not your postal address - I'll ask for that when I need it).

Let me clarify that: it's got to be about TOC and it's got to be quite interesting.  I don't care how many words you leave. It might be a story about how you discovered TOC.  It might be a little known fact (or even fiction) about Eli Goldratt.  It might be a success story, or a failure.  A quite interesting link is fine.  Just so long as it is about TOC and quite interesting.

My example would be that "I didn't know that TOC was pronounced T - O - C until about 5 years ago; before that I thought people pronounced it Toc, as in Tick."

I'll pick the winner just after Christmas and the folks at the American Society for Quality will post out the book to the lucky winner (who I'll pick with a little bit of randomness too). 

Comments

[Marcel]

Clarke,

My company has collaborated with AGI and Novaces to train the US Navy and Marines in LSS and TOC.

I am a Jonah-wannabe; as I see this as a very powerful tool, as well as CCPM; which I learned at Raytheon in their black belt program.

From your site I did, indeed, purchase Dettmer's book and it's very good. I like it better than Lisa's 'thinking for a change'...and I have recommended it to many of my colleagues. I really like the IO-map...

Keep up the good work...

Regards,

Marcel

[Humberto R. Baptista]

Hi Clarke,

Great blog.

I've discovered one very interesting thing recently with TOC:

Almost every company struggles with the following cloud:

__________D. Change
_____B. Growth
A. Successful company
_____C. Stability
__________D'. Not change

And that there is ONLY one way to evaporate this cloud: the first entity on any VV S&T.

[Alejandro Garcia]

Something that I've learned using this site.
So I knew how to create Current Reality Trees
but then Jim Bowles (in http://www.tocthinkers.com/2007/10/jim-bowles-on-u.html) said:
"Bill’s trees do not go down as far as a core problem. They stop at root causes. "
In the beginning I didn't understand his asseveration.

Then later, you (Clarke) said in a post about the 3 accepted ways to create the cloud.. I didn't know about the 3 methods so I was even more confused.

Finally while listening to "Beyond the Goal" Dr. Goldratt said: "The definition of a problem is: The conflict that prevents a system from reaching its goal..."

So I kept thinking about it... until It hit me!
yes with a CRT you get to a root cause.
but then you have to create the cloud that creates that root cause THAT is the Core conflict.

Took me a while to get to that point.. jeje... paying for the Jonah program would had been easier ;-)

PS: I would like this book

[Seyda Serdar-Asan]

Most of the everyday systems we face or live in are complex systems. According to the complexity theory, in every complex system there are a few underlying components (rules, causes etc.) that can change the whole system. If we can find these rules, we may keep the system under control, then it becomes easier to manage. To find these underlying components we can use the TP tools...

For me the most exciting thing about TOC is the assertion that
"the more complex (high number of interactions/interdependencies) a system is , the easier it can be managed."

Best Regards,
Seyda

[Adail Muniz Retamal]

In Portuguese, TOC is the acronym for "Transtorno Obsessivo Compulsivo", which in English is OCD - "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder".

Since I've founded the TOC-Brasil Yahoo group (http://br.groups.yahoo.com/group/toc-brasil) in April/2006, at least 3 people have signed in looking for help on OCD... :)

Thinking better about this, I realized that a person with OCD and TOC have some things in common, particularly, a compulsive obsession on improving systems... ;)

Cheers,

Adail