What Are the Thinking Processes?
The Thinking Processes from the Theory of Constraints TOC first appeared in the novel It’s Not Luck (1994), although a preliminary sketch of the Conflict Cloud had been published in the essay “What is this thing called TOC” that Dr. Goldratt wrote in 1991. Since then dozens of books and publications have become available, each of which claiming to provide further insight into the way the Thinking Processes should be used. Oded Cohen and myself dedicated nearly 40 pages of our book Deming and Goldratt: the Decalogue (1999) to that end. Indeed, the Thinking Processes are foundational for a successful adoption of our ten step process called “The Decalogue”.
The TP tools were devised to sustain and focus the change process underpinned by the POOGI (process of ongoing improvement) advocated by TOC. Each of the three phases of change:
- What to change
- What to change to
- How to make the change happen
is supported and facilitated by a purposefully designed logical tool. All together the Thinking Processes provide a very comprehensive and powerful mechanism that can ensure effective supervision and guidance over the change process. The Thinking Processes also represent an ideal companion to the development of a project plan.
The Thinking Processes help the visualization (through precise verbalization) of the complex, highly nonlinear network of cause-effect relationships that mark reality, as we perceive it. Such a network maps the “conversations” that make up our cognitive horizon.
With “conversations” we mean the aggregate of some of the most relevant categories of speech we use and that define the semantic boundary of our universe.
Within the framework of Intelligent Management the Thinking Processes play a very critical role; they enhance and fortify the faculties of the intellect that are responsible for the conception of new ideas (intuition), their full development through analysis (understanding) and the operational deployment of the actions needed to carry out the implementation of the fully analyzed idea (knowledge).
The Thinking Processes do so by linking these faculties, hence enabling a higher level of control over the interdependencies among these faculties; they act as controller over the variation associated with our thought processes. Moreover, the Thinking Processes help to harness the powerful forces represented by the emotions involved in the change process.
Emotional attributes play a role in the change process that is just as important as the purely intellect driven one. The reason can be easily understood. If we seek to activate in an organization a process of continuous improvement we must trigger in people the desire to continuously learn. Such a desire cannot be sustained over time purely by the rational realization that “to live is to learn”. It just does not work that way.
Moreover, learning can be very de-stabilizing on an emotional level because it continuously pushes forward the boundary of our cognition and, with it, the gap between what we know and what we feel we can do with what we know.
In order to leverage in a positive way the tension originated by this gap we must get a handle on our emotions, understand them and refine them; in other words, we must transform their potentially destructive power into a positive force that sustains change.
This is precisely the role of the Thinking Processes: to help us manage the blend of intellect and emotion in the change process. In this way, “change” loses the somewhat ill defined feature of a corporate exercise and becomes that transformational effort which is at the very heart of the success of every individual and organization alike.
See our Training Sessions to learn these Thinking Processes.
The Thinking Processes are featured in the business novel ‘The Human Constraint: How Business Leaders Can Embed Continuous Innovation, Conflict Resolution and Problem solving Into Daily Practice’ from Routledge, 2024.
See also:
Building the Core Conflict Cloud
A brief guide to building a Prerequisite Tree and Transition Tree
See also our Training Sessions to learn these Thinking Processes
