TOC Thinkers

Q3 (part ii) Jim Bowles

Q3:  You helped me get to where I am today when you helped refine the amateur TOC analysis which I did for my MBA dissertation and turn it into something that eventually became my book.  I don't owe you just a pint for that ... I should probably give you an entire brewery.  I know you've helped several others via skype and email ... without giving a way any trade secrets or names ... can you tell us a little about the process you use to do this?

A3a: It occurred to me this morning that it may be worthwhile mentioning a refinement to the TOC Roadmap that I developed whilst helping people like yourself. During the development of the Thinking Processes we had an opportunity to work with many different individuals and groups. We were able to conduct trials of different ways of teaching people how to use the TP based on our experiences of what worked and what didn't. For example I was assigned to work with a group of people from the National Milk Records.

Their organisation had a problem in getting milk samples from different herds around the country to the test laboratories and then getting the results back to the dairy farmers in a timely manner. It was a quality system service that had been developed when the organisation had all been part of The Milk Marketing Board. As an integrated unit they had been able to coordinate and control things that were becoming more difficult as the different parts of the organisation were sold off as private entities.

[Perhaps a good example of Eli's warning about not segmenting resources.]

The lead-times to get results back to the farmers were becoming a major concern. Many results got back within a few days but it was a process with a long tail – some results could take about three weeks. I was instructed to work with this group of twelve people in a new way.

They defined their UDEs and then I took them through what we called a parallel process. Firstly they each constructed a negative branch: building upwards from the UDE. Once each branch had been posted on the wall of the room it was easy for them to see where the links occurred between each branch: they quickly constructed the top of the CRT. But we had learned that drilling down to the core problem often proved difficult for most people. One way was to draw an empty box below the tree that had been constructed and ask them to find a form of wording that created a link between that box and the open ended entries in the top of the tree. [Those entities that people like Bill Dettmer call root causes] This then became a two way process, drilling down by using the structure I described earlier: this entity exists because ….. : Thus completing the sentence intuitively. Or the alternative being to speculate a cause by wording the empty box below and checking, using the "If…. Then" connections between that entity and the open ended entries. By using this approach they were able to complete the CRT in one day. But what about the parallel process part – before they started speculating about the core problem I asked them to return to the UDEs and showed them how to construct a cloud. The advantage of this process is that it helps them see that there are two sides to the problem – one side that they will often see clearly, the other side that is often less obvious. But most importantly of all by converting the cloud into a tree they begin to see links between the two types of logic and it helps to take them to the lower reaches of the CRT. It was during such trials that we found that it was possible to start with the cloud to form the trunk of the CRT. This gave a much clearer picture of the core conflict than we had had previously trying to determine the core problem. In the early stages of the development of the TP we were invited to closely examine trees and clouds. Finding the core problem at a "Vee" connection and tracing the legs of the cloud through the CRT. This was painstaking work but it allowed us to clearly see the link between the two structures reading the CRT using "If – Then" logic one way but then reading it backwards as it were using the necessity logic of the cloud. For example everytime the UDE "due date performance is poor" occurs at the top of a tree it can be traced back to an entity in the lower part of the tree which will show what need (requirement) is being served that results in this UDE. So it became clear that the CRT is an elaboration of the legs of a cloud with the entities and underlying assumptions forming the trees. This led to the development of the n-cloud method (in many cases three are sufficient to construct the core conflict cloud). I have also learned that there are many situations which are so dire that one cloud is sufficient to do a whole TOC analysis from – those situations I call the do or die ones, or choice between life and death but perhaps that is the subject of another question. 

But how did I use this knowledge to help people? 

Many of the people that I have helped simply couldn't find the core problem/conflict. The processes used for constructing a CRT aren't easy to use to do this if you do not have good intuition of the subject matter and only those at the heart of managing the system will really know the founding assumptions of the system. In cases where the system has matured well beyond that of the founders it can be even more difficult to determine the assumptions that sustain the conflict. But we can help people from the organisation construct the cloud. Once they have that they can ask the right people to help them surface the assumptions that maintain the core conflict.

To assist others I have done a fair amount of exchanges using emails. This is not one of the easiest mediums to use between a tutor and student so I began to experiment with different ways of presenting and exchanging data with them. I found that once we had the UDEs out in the open I could build a table using an Excel Spreadsheet. By taking my students through a sequence of questions (built into the spreadsheet). They listed the opposing actions, the needs that drove those actions, and the common objective of each cloud. But an interesting thing occurred each time I got someone to tabulate their data this way. As they filled in the columns the core conflict seemed to jump out at them. It became easier to determine and validate the core conflict.

All I had to do then was to show them how to convert that generic cloud into the base or trunk of the CRT and connect all the UDEs to the top and you have a first class Communications CRT.

Q6 Jim Bowles

Q6. Oh and I have to ask: did you ever see Joe Cocker before he became big? 

[Jim and Joe both grew up in Sheffiled, UK, around the same time ... ]

I don’t know whether I am on to the right guy but I recall a time when I was with a friend in a pub when we lived in Stannington: I went out with him every Monday night for years. On one occasion we had the pub virtually to ourselves and this guy came into the bar and asked for a pint. I was stood to his left and immediately thought I recognised him. I asked are you? Did you live? Etc. and he looked at me blankly as he kept saying no. Then my friend nudged me and said “He’s so and so – the singer” I feel sure he said Joe Cocker. But it was a long time ago. But I wasn’t drunk – I have never been in that state. Two reason why – I could never afford it and I tend to fall asleep during my third pint.

Q5 - Jim Bowles

Q5: Earlier you wrote: "At the time they were forming the Goldratt Network and I was invited to join them. Rather that learning about the existing tools that they had I became part of the team that develop and translated the Thinking Processes.  What an experience that was but perhaps you should ask your next question."  So I have to ask ... can you tell us about that experience.

A5: Perhaps this should be the subject matter of my book (if I ever write one). I started by working with Oded on the idea of the TOC club. Eli had this idea of bringing the Theory of Constraints to individuals. He had written a number of Late Night discussions and the idea was to get people to read these and to use them to practice producing trees and clouds. Of course it was a promotional tool but for me they provided subject matters to analyse. In parallel with this we were working with Oded to learn how to produce Negative and Positive trees: or Positive trees with negative leaves. My biggest exposure to the Thinking Process came near the end of 1991 when Eli brought his entourage of young women tutors from New Haven CT., to the UK Jonah upgrade workshop. What an emotional experience that turned out to be.

I’m not sure what happened but perhaps with hindsight I can now explain it. I was asked to video the proceeding – I had a good VHS video camera which I had used to video Eli’s workshops but whilst using it at this workshop I began to feel “out on a limb” I was there but looking at the proceeding through the lens of a camera. I wasn’t with my colleagues and so felt a bit isolated.

Then we went into breakout sessions to learn how trees were constructed – I remember well our assigned tutor, Christy, she was in her twenties blond and beautiful. We all fell in love with her at first sight as she stood in front of us showing us how to proceed. We observed as different members of the group construct their trees. It was a truly international event and I recall one of the Israelis presenting a tree on the subject of having to cope with the influx of a million people into the State of Israel. His department had the task of building the infrastructure to deal with all those people – I think from Europe after the Berlin wall had come down.

After the teaching session we were asked to go away and produce our own trees. It wasn’t until several years later that I learned that I build trees in my head and then dump them to paper. I wish someone had spotted that fact at the conference. I recall sitting at a table away from the madding crowd lost in thought. I hadn’t a clue where my thoughts were as nothing appeared on that paper in front of me. But I must have been analysing my own current reality. You have to remember that in that year I had gone from being employed as a successful manager of a team of really bright people working with the engineering industry – with ready access to many open doors and welcoming clients. Then in May that year I was made redundant, with a small pension to support my family and a desire to follow a career in TOC. I was working with an organisation as an Associate, that didn’t employ me and were asking me to pay them to learn how to work with them. At that time I hadn’t a clue how my finances would work out and the investment in time and effort seemed huge. Needless to say that took me into what Oded called a “dip” – a depression that lasted about six months before I began to come out of it. I remember someone coming to me and saying “You look lost Jim”, I replied “I am, I want my mum.” If truth be known what I really needed at that time was a PRT of my own: A clear plan of the obstacles and intermediate objectives of how to get there. The irony was that the PRT didn’t appear on our journey until several months later. When we finally got to developing that art of the TOC Roadmap I can remember thinking, “My god why didn’t I have this tool twenty years ago.”

At this point I could talk about my experiences with the TOC club or with working with Oded and his dedicated team of people. But both of them could be long stories so I will end now – my computer has frozen on me twice whilst writing this.

Q4 - Jim Bowles

Q4:  What has been your most satisfying TOC achievement, to date?

A4: There are many stories that I might relate because I have loved doing all of them. The refinery project in the late 1990s was perhaps the most demanding – I was asked to work with a Strategy team that had 64 UDEs on the table that they wanted to explain to the CEO about why their Turnarounds weren’t working properly. Before I could begin to work with them to produce a proper work I had to find a way to show them that what they had already done off their own bat was a complete mess. They had constructed a tree that used some effect-cause-effect logic and a good mix of flow logic. They had a tree that filled a large cabin wall – but it couldn’t be read in a way that I knew how to read them. It took me a week to get to them to the point where they could see why they had to tear up the tree that they had produced. A point of satisfaction came when their training manager who had come in as an observer that day came to me and asked –“Where did you learn to facilitate like that?” I responded – “Twenty-one years as a trainer.” I loved the smile on his face.

I think that maybe my work with a Gliding club was perhaps the most gratifying – it was done to produce an improvement plan at a club that had the worst accident record in the UK – they had a reputation for being a club where too many pilots died. I only hope that they can sustain what has been achieved in the past two years under the direction of my friend and long time associate who is now their CFO. He was the guy who got me in there to act as a facilitator to produce the plan.

Q3 - Jim Bowles

Q3:  You helped me get to where I am today when you helped refine the amateur TOC analysis which I did for my MBA dissertation and turn it into something that eventually became my book.  I don't owe you just a pint for that ... I should probably give you an entire brewery.  I know you've helped several others via Skype and email ... without giving a way any trade secrets or names ... can you tell us a little about the process you use to do this?

A3: I have to start with a typical TOC facilitators answer – it depends. Let me start with your case. If I remember rightly you asked for people to view your CRT – this then became the subject matter of the TOC Software list – I duly responded and the rest is history as they say. Like many other cases I immediately recognised a problem with your tree. It was impossible to see the core problem and as a result I think you were floundering to identify the core conflict and build the cloud. I think my reaction was something like this, it looks like a plate of spaghetti I cannot get hold of any of the ends. How did I so quickly see why you were having trouble? There were simply too many open ended entries into the tree and no obvious “Vee” connection. Your tree was typical of the many that I had seen that had tried to emulate Bill Dettmer’s examples in his books. Until recently it wasn’t clear to me as to why Bill stopped drilling down the CRT sufficiently to find the core problem – only late last year did I learn that he was reluctant to take a management team to the conclusion that they couldn’t manage properly: Seems to me that this was based on a fear that they would resent him and stop working with him. He had apparently found that he could make good progress with a client by merely working on sufficient root causes. Perhaps he’s much smarter than I am – I must admit that my training and Yorkshire upbringing encourages me to go for the jugular and want to get to the heart of the matter. People may not like me doing so but I wouldn’t feel right if I hadn’t done a proper diagnostic on the problem.

I also assisted another guy who was into software development, but he had tried working with Lisa J. Scheinkopf’s book – again I started with his CRT because he was having trouble identifying the core problem and cloud. Unlike yours his tree was one sided. I immediately saw that what he’d constructed was a negative branch – he was completely ignoring the other side of the cloud. He had nicely connected all the entities relating to the operations but had ignored things from the point of view of their clients – I recognised this from a problem that I had had during my first real project where I followed the TOC Roadmap on my own. I had constructed the CRT but couldn’t see a “Vee” connection. Then it occurred to me that part of the tree was missing: The UDEs had led me nicely through one side of the tree about the operations but to make it complete I had to include something about the organisation itself. If you want more detail on that then you might like to look at my attempt at a book: the Armeg Ltd., example.

So is there a secret recipe I use? I look at the open ended entries and ask some basic questions: is it negative, is it a fact of life, and is it a proper statement. When you have seen a lot of trees produced by others you learn to spot tell tale wordings. But once I have gone through this process I then look at the entries that are negative and form a sentence with their wording – this (entity) exists because ….. And complete the sentence with my best guess – mostly the answers are intuitive. I’ve worked with managers and organisations for sufficient years to have a good bank of causalities. All I have to do then is ask the question of the person I am working with – I gave you an example of this when I critiqued Bill Dettmer’s Wurtzburg example last year.

Q2 - Jim Bowles

Q2: Is it Mike or Jim and why do I ask?

According to family legend when I was a baby the family were discussing what to call me. My mother liked the name Nicholas as she had intended to call her first son by that name but he had died at birth some eighteen months before me. So they decided they needed a new name for me. For some undisclosed reason they chose Michael. At the time they lived close to my grandparent's home where my father had two sisters and a brother: his eldest sister, my aunt Doris suggested that Michael was a nice name for a young boy but not really a man's name and suggested James as this could be shortened to Jim. She must have had a crystal ball because the day that I started work at Thomas Firth and John Brown as a budding apprentice I was placed into an office with another spotty faced youth whose name was Micheal Eason. We were to be exposed for a year in the corridors of power at head office to do as the Director's bid us: Opening mail first thing in the morning, showing visitors to their offices, supporting the work of the chauffeurs (we got to ride in some big fancy cars) and we ate in the Directors dining kitchen. The cooks taste tested their culinary delights on the two of us, what a treat that was and probably explains where I started to add weight to my skinny body. But the two concierges' who we worked with pointed out a problem – how shall we know who is who when we need to call you. I said "I have another name but the only time it gets used is when I go to the doctors or hospital and they call me James, you can try calling me Jim if you like." From that day I got used to introducing myself as Jim – my name is Jim, Jim Bowles. But my family and friends continued to call me Michael, Mick or Mike. Nowadays I have more contact with people who call me Mick or Mike than I do with those who call me Jim. The funniest situations were those where I was in the presence of people who knew me in both walks of life. My best friend and best man (who unfortunately died at an early age) also became a colleague in my Industrial Training days. He could switch appropriately to use either name. He was a really good bloke and friend – I miss him.

Jim Bowles Q1

Q1: Jim, I hope you don't blush when you read this but you're my hero!  We've known each other now, originally just by email, for about 10 years and I would say that you done more to raise my level of TOC skill and knowledge more than anyone else apart from Eli Goldratt himself. We've come to know each other as friends during the last decade but I guess a lot of people don't know all that much about your background.  Would you mind telling us about yourself, both wrt to TOC and your other life?

As I am now in my seventieth year this could take some time to relate the whole story.

My life can be viewed in five phases

As an infant and part of a family. [I have written a book on most of that part.]

As a scholar through childhood, as a youth and adult.

Starting work and my progress to become a Professional Engineer and heading up the engineering function of a research association.

Putting technical things behind me and becoming a professional training adviser/consultant.

Being made redundant and deciding to go it alone and becoming part of the Goldratt Network.

My work with TOC (it wasn't called that until the early 1990s) started in 1987. At the time I was the manager of a team of specialist trainers. The engineering industry (for whom we worked) was pressurising our organisation to help them cope with change – there were immense pressures to improve both quality and manufacturing systems. Up to that point in time we had operated on a regional basis and each region had developed specialist skills through our work with the whole of the engineering industry. The biggest push came from the Scottish region from companies like Cummins, IBM, Honeywell and Motorola. Their Regional manager was given the task of coordinating a national effort to bring a team together to spearhead our response. We were moving from a cost recovery mode of operation to becoming a pseudo consultancy organisation. One day my Regional Manager called me into his office and asked me to volunteer to take four members of my team into that national team. As someone who always looked upon something new as a challenge, and with my arm up my back, I didn't hesitate in accept his mafia offer. They chose to use the former staff of Creative Output to provide our basic training and those same people became our mentors for the following year. After two weeks of input and a compulsory reading list that included The Goal and all things modern with regard to manufacturing and quality we were taken through a process called Strategic Business Analysis. This used the knowledge of the V, A and T plants to identify the organisations constraint, once the constraint had been identified it was relatively easy to show how if they properly addressed this how much more money they could make. We learned how to conduct these three day analyses – over the next eighteen months we amazed ourselves and our clients with our skills.  I used my trainer skills with a guy called David Marks to develop a one day workshop based on "The Race" and we ran hundreds of these nationally. David created the JOSI game – our JIT, OPT, simulator that was the star of our show and provided our platform for teaching managers and supervisors the rudimentary elements of DBR and buffer management. At the time the only other TOC teaching aid we had was the OPT simulator – a computerised version of the P&Q exercise. But we had a kit bag full of other skills from our quality and manufacturing work.

The Competitive Manufacturing Group and its thirty-five team members worked together until 1991 but then Mrs Thatcher's government decided that Industrial Training Boards had served their purpose and scrapped them. I was made redundant.

I had already decided that I was going to "go-it alone" and contacted Oded Cohen, Eli Goldratt's UK Partner to ask how I might continue my development with TOC. Most of us had been denied access to the training materials that were available such as the simulators but David Marks had been fortunate enough to have attended one of their workshops, and he raved about them. At the time they were forming the Goldratt Network and I was invited to join them. Rather that learning about the existing tools that they had I became part of the team that develop and translated the Thinking Processes.  What an experience that was but perhaps you should ask your next question. [Clarke: Will do ... but I'll come back to this.]