TOC Thinking Processes: Anybody can be a Jonah! | top
Lisa J. Scheinkopf

Special excerpt from Lisa Scheinkopf's Chapter 25 of Theory of Constraints Handbook

Introduction: Anybody Can Be a Jonah!

If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent. —Sir Isaac Newton

The Thinking Processes (TP) are the tools of Jonah, the beloved physicist-mentor of The Goal’s Alex Rogo (Goldratt and Cox, 1986). In order to really gain benefit from the use of the Theory of Constraints (TOC) TP, you need to adapt the mentality and discipline of thinking like Jonah. You don’t need to be born a genius.

You don’t need to have a PhD. You do need the conviction to think clearly, and to consider yourself a scientist. According to Dr. Eli Goldratt, “no exceptional brain power is needed to construct a new science or to expand on an existing one. What is needed is just the courage to face inconsistencies and to avoid running away from them just because ‘that's the way it was always done’” (Goldratt and Cox, 1986, Introduction). This leads us to the principle on which all of TOC is based—the concept of inherent simplicity.

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