| Monday, July 12, 2010

I’ve been reading Steven Pressfield’s blog lately. He has some really great posts and his book ‘The War of Art’ is on my reading list.

He wrote a post called ‘Start at the End’ which resonates usefully with my reading about Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints in The Goal. I left a comment there which you might find it interesting to think about too.

Have you heard of Eli Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints and what he calls current and future reality trees? Check out the Wikipedia page if you haven’t.

With current reality trees, as far as I can work out, you look at your current reality and ask: ‘what’s causing my current reality to be like it is?’, ‘what’s causing my life/job/project to be progressing in this way right now?’ and then: ‘what’s causing the causes?’ until you get to some main underlying cause that will help you solve more than one non-desired current reality (what we generally call ‘a problem).

With future reality trees, as Steven mentions in his post, you start at the end with the desired end state and work backwards: “what comes directly before my desired outcome?” then: “what comes before that?” etc, until you reach a connection point between your current reality and the chain of causes and effects that will take you towards your goal.

Until you reach something that’s linked to your future goal but that you can actually do right now. Then you can start walking down the path to your goal.

Here’s an example:

—I want €1m in my bank account.

—What causes €1m to appear in my bank account?

—Somebody, or some bodies, will have to transfer €1m into my bank account, because right now it’s at €0.

—What causes someone to transfer €1m into my bank account?

—Well, seen as €1m is the price they’re going to pay, you have to give them more than €1m in value. (Buffet’s ‘pay a dime for a dollar’ idea).

—So how do I do that?

—Create and sell €1m of value. Or 33,333 x €30 of value, or some other combination.

—So what makes something valuable? What do my clients/readers/supporters value?

—There are many different types of value.

—etc, etc…

…until you get to…

—paint a picture, write a book, organise an event, teach something, build something, etc. Help someone in some valuable way.

Goldratt also wrote a series of didactic business novels. The first one was called “The Goal”. You might find his ideas interesting when thinking about cause, effect and the attainment of goals.

Definitely check out more of Steven’s blog if you like this stuff, too.