Win-win conflict resolution

Idea evaluation and feedback

Team-building

Empowerment and delegation

A Brief Introduction to TOC and its Thinking Processes

The Theory of Constraints (TOC) applies the thinking processes used in the hard sciences, i.e., "cause and effect" - to understand and improve systems of all types, but particularly, organizations. The process a clinician applies to treating a patient is an excellent analogy for explaining how TOC goes about solving a systems problem. If we were to describe the overall process used by a clinician treating a patient, it would look something like:

1. Diagnosis: Knowing the futility of treating the symptoms, a clinician begins with a list of observable symptoms and uses cause-and-effect to seek out the underlying common cause for all of them, the "disease" or core problem.

2. Design of a Treatment Plan: Considering the uniqueness of the patient and his/her diagnosis, a treatment plan is developed that first and foremost treats the disease (e.g., surgery), but also suggests what other things must be done alongside that "cure" to ensure the treatment will work (e.g., pain relief and bed rest), and that the best possible health is restored to the patient (e.g., physical therapy). In this process, potential side-effects of the treatment are identified and the means for preventing or mitigating them are determined, becoming key elements of the treatment.

3. Execution of the Treatment Plan: Taking into consideration, again, the uniqueness of the patient's situation, a plan is developed for how to implement the treatment (e.g., surgery and pre-op work are scheduled, arrangements for transportation to and from the hospital are secured, hospital beds to be used at home are ordered, etc.)

Next

* Contributed by: -
Vempati Karthik,
PGDBM II Semester,
Institute of Public Enterprise,
Osmania University Campus, Hyderabad.