The Trap of Doing What Makes Sense

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 something like: a real problem creates pressure, the team responds with what feels like the appropriate action, and that action triggers a chain of effects that reinforces the original problem.

The key insight is that the people making these decisions are competent. They're experienced. And they're choosing the action that makes the most logical sense given what they see in front of them.

That's exactly why it's so hard to break.

Boeing: A Vicious Cycle on Full Display

Most of you have followed what happened at Boeing over the last several years. It's worth looking at through the vicious cycle lens.

Boeing was under enormous competitive pressure from Airbus. The intuitive response? Push production speed. Get planes out the door faster. Make delivery rate the primary metric.

That pressure cascaded down to the factory floor. Workers and managers felt it daily. Design changes that might slow certification were rejected. The metric was speed.

You may know what happened...

The speed pressure led to quality breakdowns. Misdrilled holes. Missing bolts. Parts that didn't meet standards.

A former senior manager at Boeing's 737 factory described an environment where leadership only wanted to hear one thing: how fast the planes could get out the door.

Those quality breakdowns led to rework, inspections, FAA audits, and eventually groundings. The 737 MAX was grounded for nearly two years after two crashes that killed 346 people. Boeing's own CFO later acknowledged that for years, they prioritized moving airplanes through the factory over getting it done right.

And what did each setback create? More pressure to speed up. More urgency to recover delivery timelines. Which fed the same cycle.

Pressure to compete → Push speed → Quality degrades → Rework and delays → More pressure to compete.

Boeing has estimated losses exceeding $20 billion from this cycle. And at the core of it all was an intuitive decision that every executive in the room would have agreed with: we need to go faster.

The Pattern May Be Too Close For Comfort

Now, Boeing is an extreme case. But the structure is the same in operations of all sizes.

Your team is behind on deliveries, so you release more work to the floor.

More work in process creates more congestion at the constraint.

Congestion creates more delays.

More delays create more pressure to release even more work.

Or your projects are running late, so everyone starts working on everything at once to "show progress."

Multitasking spreads resources thin.

Integration problems surface later.

Rework cycles multiply.

Projects fall further behind.

If you recall from training, the vicious cycle has a common structure: the action that feels right in the moment feeds a chain of effects that makes the original problem worse. And because the action feels right, no one questions it. They just push harder.

How to Know You're in One

Here's something worth paying attention to. If your team keeps applying the same type of fix and the problem keeps coming back, you're likely in a vicious cycle.

The fix is feeding the problem.

Ask yourself: what is the one thing our team keeps doing more of when pressure increases?

That's your entry point into the cycle. And the counterintuitive move, the one that feels wrong, is usually the one that breaks it.

In Boeing's case, slowing down to get it right would have felt like the worst possible decision when they were behind on deliveries. But it was the only decision that could have broken the loop.

In your operation, reducing WIP when you're behind on orders feels wrong. But if you recall Little's Law from training, it's the move that accelerates flow.

Your April Challenge

This month, gather your leadership team and map out one vicious cycle in your operation. Use the structure from Day 1:

• What is the persistent problem?

• What action do we keep taking in response?

• What chain of effects does that action trigger?

• Does it loop back to reinforce the original problem?

If it does, you've found your vicious cycle. And the breakthrough starts with questioning the assumption behind that intuitive action.

One Last Thing! Goldratt Global Conference 2026: Kyoto, Japan

This July, the Goldratt Group is hosting its Global Conference in Kyoto, Japan, and we wanted to make sure our community knows about it.

July 21-22, 2026. Kyoto, Japan.

What makes this event different from most conferences is that you won't just hear about TOC. You'll see it in action.

The conference includes behind-the-scenes plant tours at organizations like MISUMI (high-mix, fully customized manufacturing at scale), Yamaha Motor (blending craftsmanship with automation), LIXIL (dramatically shortened lead times), and Prime Planet Energy & Solutions (large-scale EV battery production, a Toyota-Panasonic joint venture).

You'll also hear directly from leaders at Delta Air Lines, Toyota-Panasonic, Vale (one of the world's largest mining companies), and Kyoto University on how they applied TOC to drive real results.

And Rami Goldratt, CEO of Goldratt Group, along with Ajai Kapoor, will lead an interactive workshop where participants identify their own vicious cycles, challenge the assumptions behind them, and define practical actions to break inertia.

For those who can arrive early, the Gion Festival starts July 17. It's one of Japan's most iconic cultural events, with over 1,000 years of history.

If you're serious about seeing how flow works in practice, this is a rare opportunity.

Learn more and register here: https://kyoto2026.goldrattgroup.com

As you know, we have Flow Solutions Workshops scheduled across the U.S. Visit www.goldrattflow.com for dates near you.