Management Skills: Applying ToC to Managing People

The Theory of Constraints (TOC) Management Skills Workshop provides you with breakthrough practical applications to improve your personal work performance, and increase the productivity of any team you work with or manage.  Focusing on the actual constraints to team productivity, the unique TOC management skill set deploys the rational tools of constraint management to help you motivate people to design,  operate, and measure and control effective work processes. Starting by making you proficient in conflict management through ending with a personal and team implementation plan, this problem-solving workshop provides a laboratory for you to hone your skills for immediate application when you return to work. You performance and confidence will grow as people notice your new effectiveness and professional way of approaching any business need.

This class is appropriate for people with any level of understanding or skill in the TOC, the basis of most of the content. People with little knowledge of TOC will learn the key TOC tools for the first time. People with knowledge of the tools, particularly in the advanced Thinking Process application, will practice practical use of the individual tools for day-to-use. Bringing the tools to day-to-use helps all attendees achieve outstanding results as a team member or leader, both at work and elsewhere. It is also a basis for those with advanced knowledge to use as TOC trainers for others in their organization.

Day 1: Conflict Management

Benefits:

• Become a better listener.

• Resolve personal conflicts without stress or worry.

• Increase self-confidence to deal with conflicts with or between others.

• Lead others to resolve conflicts that are demoralizing people and limiting results.

Learning Objectives:

• Turn any conflict situation from “you vs. me” to “us vs. the problem or opportunity”.

• Develop an Evaporating Cloud (EC) for any situation.

• Communicate the EC to others in a way that engages them to develop win-win solutions.

• Role play applying the EC until you are comfortable with using it in any situation.

Day 2:  Alignment, Feedback, and Delegation

Benefits to attendees:

• Enhance work processes.

• Prevent “fire fighting”.

• Transfer knowledge.

• Increase desire for additional responsibility.

Learning Objectives:

• Build a Negative Branch Reservation (NBR) as a means to providing effective feedback.

• Communicate an NBR in a way that motivates the other to work towards improving.

• Develop a Transition Tree (TrT) to communicate effective performance of a work process.

Day 3: Personal and Team Implementation Plans

• Benefits to attendees:

• Create your own self-improvement plan.

• Motivate teams to develop coherent strategies and synchronized plans to achieve challenging goals.

• Overcome obstacles.

Learning Objectives:

• Develop a Prerequisite Tree (PRT) to identify your personal obstacles, and serve as the basis of coherent strategy and synchronized plan for your own objectives.

• Role play leading a team to build a PRT for a challenging goal.

• Develop an initial PRT for your work team.

• Convert PRTs and TRTs into critical chain project plans.

Reading Material:

Goldratt, E. (1994). Its Not Luck. Great Barrington, MA: North River Press