Every leadership team I talk to has a version of this story... Something is going wrong, so they take action. The action makes sense. Everyone agrees with it. And yet, six months later, the problem is still there, or worse. Why? Because the intuitive reaction often feeds the very cycle it was supposed to fix. Why Plausible Decisions Create Negative Outcomes If you recall from our Flow Solutions Training, we spend time mapping vicious cycles for a reason. The pattern goes so

Hello TOC Flow Community! Over the last few months we've explored how "Reset" helps us focus on the right constraint, and how "Scarcity" explains why smart people stay trapped in vicious cycles. This month, I want to connect those themes to something that most leadership teams of small and medium sized businesses struggle with: innovation. Most leaders I meet think innovation means creating something new. It doesn't. As Dr. Eli Goldratt defined it: "Value is created by

Hello TOC Flow Community! I just finished reading "Scarcity" by Sendhil Mullainathan, and it explains something we see every day in organizations: Intelligent leaders taking actions which intuitively they know aren't working. The book, by the way, is about the impact of scarcity to human behavior, so it goes way beyond the impact in our professional lives, but it's worth highlighting here how it relates to TOC's Systems Thinking paradigm. The Scarcity Trap Mullainathan des

👋 Hello TOC Flow Community! Happy New Year! I hope you are looking forward to the opportunities ahead and preparing for a great 2026. I read 40 books in 2025, and one that stood out to me was Dan Heath's new book Reset: How to Change What's Not Working. It reinforces everything we teach about focus and constraints. I highly recommend. Heath's core message resonates deeply with TOC: You can't change everything. You can't even change most things. But you can change th

Hello TOC Flow Community! December already? As we wrap up 2025, I want to share something that perfectly captures why we do what we do. 🔥Attendee Spotlight: Slow is Smooth. Smooth is Fast. Kurt Hoge, President of RenoType in Reno, NV, sent me this update, and it made my day: "When I first read Eli Goldratt's The Goal in January of this year, I knew immediately that we needed to bring the core teachings of the Theory of Constraints into our print shop. What I didn't k

Hello TOC Flow Community! November already? The saying is really true... life is like a roll of toilet paper, the closer you get to the end the faster it goes, but that's a story for another day! Here's what I've learned after years of watching companies do their yearly strategy planning: The organizations that actually achieve breakthroughs aren't the ones with the most ideas. They're the ones brave enough to ignore most of them. The Jeff Bezos Wake-Up Call Two weeks a

👋 Hello TOC Flow Community! We’ve seen a lot of interest and great feedback on Mastering Flow , so this month I’m sharing why it’s worth having on your desk. Even if you’ve attended a Flow Solutions Workshop and you own Goldratt’s Rules of Flow by Dr. Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag, Mastering Flow still earns its spot. Rules of Flow is a short, engaging novel that helps teams grasp the concepts. Mastering Flow is your field manual. Keep it nearby and reference the specific rout

👋 Hello TOC Flow Community! I hope you all had a good Labor Day Weekend, and a chance to.. well… not labor! August wrapped with teams turning TOC concepts into action. Our recent cohorts in Indianapolis and Reno spanned printing and graphics, custom event signage, performance engine components, precision PCB assembly, fasteners, food manufacturing and packaging, medical devices, and coatings. Different worlds, same lesson: when you put Flow at the center, performance improv

The momentum is real. July wrapped with many teams reporting clear moves in the right direction. Our Reno and Indianapolis cohorts...

Another month, more momentum. We’re watching the concepts you learned turn into real throughput on shop floors and project sites across...