257: The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt

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1. 00:00:00 All right, so Corey, did you write your eulogy?
2. 00:00:02 I didn't.
3. 00:00:03 I thought about it twice.
4. 00:00:04 I didn't want to do it, Mike.
5. 00:00:06 Like I actively resisted this activity.
6. 00:00:11 So I had, and just so you know, listener,
7. 00:00:13 I had all of the time in the world.
8. 00:00:15 Like there is no, like, there's no excuse.
9. 00:00:17 Like I was too busy, I forgot none of that stuff.
10. 00:00:21 I looked at this a couple of different times
11. 00:00:23 and it just didn't feel right.
12. 00:00:25 It just didn't feel right, you know what I mean?
13. 00:00:27 So I didn't do it.
14. 00:00:29 I need to do it because I know the value of it.
15. 00:00:32 Because when I listen to yours, I know the value of it.
16. 00:00:35 (laughing)
17. 00:00:36 But I just couldn't do it, Mike.
18. 00:00:38 Like I feel, I feel like a failure.
19. 00:00:39 You couldn't bring yourself to do it.
20. 00:00:41 Gotcha.
21. 00:00:42 I feel like a failure.
22. 00:00:43 Yeah, I get that.
23. 00:00:45 I hope that your resistance to doing it is just you
24. 00:00:49 because I'm in the middle of recording
25. 00:00:50 a whole bunch of videos for the new version
26. 00:00:54 of the Personal Retreat course.
27. 00:00:56 And I just got done recording the ones
28. 00:00:58 about the ideal future and I mentioned the eulogy a lot
29. 00:01:01 in that one is like the bookend.
30. 00:01:03 And I'm encouraging people to do that.
31. 00:01:05 And I hope that people actually do
32. 00:01:07 because I do think it's valuable.
33. 00:01:09 I do as well.
34. 00:01:11 I just didn't want to do it twice.
35. 00:01:13 Yeah, see, that's the thing in the back of my head,
36. 00:01:14 I'm wondering like, am I just the weirdo
37. 00:01:17 who's like, hey, this is a cool activity
38. 00:01:18 and everybody else is like, dude, no way.
39. 00:01:21 (laughing)
40. 00:01:22 Yeah, I don't think, I think more people will do it
41. 00:01:25 than you think they will.
42. 00:01:27 I just resisted really hard and I don't know why.
43. 00:01:30 I just resisted really hard.
44. 00:01:31 Okay, okay, that's all right.
45. 00:01:35 You got one other action item here.
46. 00:01:37 Did you ask yourself more often, what are you afraid of?
47. 00:01:39 I have and it's really, it's what are they afraid of, right?
48. 00:01:42 'Cause I want to know like when somebody resists
49. 00:01:45 doing something or when somebody pushes back,
50. 00:01:48 like is there a fear there that's driving that?
51. 00:01:50 So I've been able to ask this question
52. 00:01:52 a couple of different times and I think this is
53. 00:01:54 an effective strategy just to get out of your own shoes
54. 00:01:59 and to think about the way somebody else is thinking.
55. 00:02:02 So like put yourself in somebody else's place.
56. 00:02:05 The bias to it though is they may not be afraid of anything.
57. 00:02:09 You know what I mean?
58. 00:02:10 They really may not be, they may just be making
59. 00:02:12 a different decision or just passionate about something.
60. 00:02:15 So you kind of lean towards a motive
61. 00:02:20 that may not be accurate.
62. 00:02:22 So that's what I have to be careful of.
63. 00:02:23 But it's like, I can tell you like there's one situation
64. 00:02:26 right now that I'm not going to go into the details of
65. 00:02:28 that like there is an individual
66. 00:02:30 that wants certain things to happen
67. 00:02:33 and I don't want those things to happen.
68. 00:02:35 And I push back with an alternative plan
69. 00:02:38 and I think that individual is afraid
70. 00:02:40 that if we don't do it his way,
71. 00:02:43 you know like he's going to lose out on whatever it is
72. 00:02:46 or he's going to like miss out.
73. 00:02:47 And I know I'm speaking in very like mythical hand wavy terms
74. 00:02:51 but like I can very much see how he is afraid
75. 00:02:55 of losing credit for this thing
76. 00:02:58 and or losing the opportunity and losing all this stuff.
77. 00:03:01 And that's driving a lot of the like pressure based decisions
78. 00:03:05 that he's trying to put on me.
79. 00:03:06 So this was good.
80. 00:03:08 Like I did this one a couple of different times.
81. 00:03:11 One with my children, one once with an individual,
82. 00:03:14 another individual and it's very effective.
83. 00:03:16 I like this one a lot.
84. 00:03:18 - All right, cool.
85. 00:03:20 My follow up action item was every day
86. 00:03:23 I try to do something to help three different people.
87. 00:03:26 Do family members count?
88. 00:03:28 - Yes.
89. 00:03:29 - Okay, then yes.
90. 00:03:31 Because dear listener shortly after we recorded,
91. 00:03:35 I think mere hours after we recorded my wife broke her leg
92. 00:03:41 and had to have emergency surgery.
93. 00:03:44 So the last couple of weeks have not gone according to plan.
94. 00:03:48 Okay, is she crutches?
95. 00:03:51 Is she one of those little scooter thingies
96. 00:03:53 or is she in a wheelchair?
97. 00:03:54 Like what's her status?
98. 00:03:55 - Sure.
99. 00:03:56 So she's been using a walker.
100. 00:03:58 She actually broke her tibia and her fibula.
101. 00:04:04 So she has a titanium rod put into her leg.
102. 00:04:07 - Wow.
103. 00:04:07 - And also kind of destroyed her ankle at the same time.
104. 00:04:12 That's just spring, but it's one of those things
105. 00:04:14 where it maybe would have been better to break it.
106. 00:04:16 She's been in a boot.
107. 00:04:18 We got one of those medical recliners.
108. 00:04:20 She's been pretty good about keeping it elevated.
109. 00:04:24 So a couple of weeks in now,
110. 00:04:26 she had her first post-op appointment yesterday
111. 00:04:29 and it's going really well.
112. 00:04:30 So they told her that you can walk on it
113. 00:04:33 as much as you can stand it basically.
114. 00:04:36 Like it'll be painful,
115. 00:04:37 but you're not gonna mess it up at this point.
116. 00:04:40 - That's good.
117. 00:04:41 - Once the boot comes off,
118. 00:04:43 she still has to wear an ankle brace
119. 00:04:45 for a couple of months.
120. 00:04:46 - My goodness.
121. 00:04:47 - She like really did a number on her ankle.
122. 00:04:51 - My goodness.
123. 00:04:52 - And now she can say she's transhuman.
124. 00:04:55 She's cyber.
125. 00:04:57 She's got some titanium.
126. 00:04:58 - She's bionic.
127. 00:05:00 - Yeah, the bionic woman.
128. 00:05:02 - So right after that happened,
129. 00:05:05 obviously I need to be at the hospital.
130. 00:05:09 I need to try to keep the plate spinning,
131. 00:05:11 get everybody where they need to go.
132. 00:05:13 Worst possible time to do this, school is starting today's
133. 00:05:18 Toby's first day at college.
134. 00:05:20 I'm starting coaching varsity soccer for the high school.
135. 00:05:25 Like it was a mess.
136. 00:05:28 First week I did pretty good though.
137. 00:05:30 Have way greater appreciation for everything she does,
138. 00:05:33 obviously, but I was doing the laundry.
139. 00:05:36 I was doing the dishes.
140. 00:05:37 I was getting people places.
141. 00:05:39 Like it was, we were making it happen.
142. 00:05:41 And then I got super sick.
143. 00:05:44 So, I don't know.
144. 00:05:46 Like, there was a period there of four or five days
145. 00:05:49 where I didn't even know which end was up,
146. 00:05:51 but other than that, my life has been making sure
147. 00:05:54 that people have what they need.
148. 00:05:57 Doing all the things, getting people all the places,
149. 00:06:00 stuff like that.
150. 00:06:01 - You didn't even have to think about this one.
151. 00:06:02 This one came to you.
152. 00:06:04 - Yeah, I actually don't, I wouldn't consider this one
153. 00:06:07 to be done because that wasn't the intention of it,
154. 00:06:10 but since you're letting me count family members,
155. 00:06:12 I will take what I can get.
156. 00:06:14 - I think you should as well,
157. 00:06:17 'cause I think you helped many, many people many, many days,
158. 00:06:20 and you're gonna continue to do that for many, many months.
159. 00:06:23 - Yeah, oh, and on top of all that,
160. 00:06:26 we're moving literally tomorrow as we record this.
161. 00:06:30 So, in the pro show we talked about,
162. 00:06:32 I've been trying to figure out what to do with a new office,
163. 00:06:35 and I found some cool new stuff.
164. 00:06:38 So, if you want to hear us talk about woodywalls.com.
165. 00:06:41 - Woodywalls.com, not a sponsor.
166. 00:06:45 - They should be.
167. 00:06:46 - They should be.
168. 00:06:48 - Yep, so, I don't know, I guess yellow,
169. 00:06:51 but I feel like I failed, but still kinda accidentally
170. 00:06:54 completed this action item, I guess, so.
171. 00:06:56 - Congratulations.
172. 00:06:58 - Thanks.
173. 00:06:59 - Oh, I had a cohort going at the time too.
174. 00:07:01 - Yeah.
175. 00:07:02 (laughs)
176. 00:07:04 - The fact that you survived the last two weeks
177. 00:07:07 is noble, like it's very wonderful
178. 00:07:11 that you survived the last two weeks.
179. 00:07:12 - It was a bit of a Herculean effort,
180. 00:07:15 not gonna lie, now that I'm reflecting on it all,
181. 00:07:20 I kinda get why I think, you know, at the time,
182. 00:07:23 I was like, "Man, this is a lot of work."
183. 00:07:25 And now that I actually am piecing it to you,
184. 00:07:27 I was like, "Yeah, that actually was a lot of work."
185. 00:07:29 - Well, it's funny how you go into survival mode,
186. 00:07:32 and you just like know what it was.
187. 00:07:34 - That's exactly what it was.
188. 00:07:35 - That's what we're gonna do, right?
189. 00:07:36 Because if we don't do it,
190. 00:07:37 it doesn't get done,
191. 00:07:37 so we're just gonna go do this thing.
192. 00:07:40 - Yep.
193. 00:07:41 Gotta do it.
194. 00:07:43 - Speaking of survival mode,
195. 00:07:44 that's actually where they're at.
196. 00:07:46 At the beginning of today's book.
197. 00:07:49 If you're ready to go there.
198. 00:07:51 - That was beautiful.
199. 00:07:52 That was an absolute-- - Thank you.
200. 00:07:53 - Thank you.
201. 00:07:53 - Thank you.
202. 00:07:54 - This guy's a pro, everybody.
203. 00:07:55 (laughs)
204. 00:07:57 - So today's book is "The Goal" by Eliyahu Goldrat.
205. 00:08:01 And this is a book that has been around for a while.
206. 00:08:06 A lot of people have spoken very highly about this.
207. 00:08:12 It's basically a business systems type book,
208. 00:08:15 but it's sort of set in an industrial manufacturing background.
209. 00:08:21 And this one, when I mentioned it,
210. 00:08:25 you got real excited.
211. 00:08:26 - Yes.
212. 00:08:27 - I asked you, I forget if it was as part of the last episode,
213. 00:08:30 or if it was after the call,
214. 00:08:31 but seems like there's definitely
215. 00:08:33 an engineering application to this.
216. 00:08:35 You were talking about how this was
217. 00:08:36 one of the better books you've ever read.
218. 00:08:38 And so, I asked you then,
219. 00:08:41 and I'm very glad that I did,
220. 00:08:42 if you wanted to facilitate this one.
221. 00:08:45 - Happily, I will happily take this.
222. 00:08:48 So would you like me to take the reins at this point?
223. 00:08:52 - I will hand it off to you at this point, yes.
224. 00:08:55 - Okay, so this book,
225. 00:08:57 I don't remember exactly when it was written,
226. 00:08:58 but it was like the 80s,
227. 00:09:00 I think is when the first edition came out.
228. 00:09:03 - Yeah, the one I got is like a 40th anniversary one.
229. 00:09:06 - Yeah, so they stopped saying like what edition it was,
230. 00:09:09 and they started saying like 25th anniversary,
231. 00:09:11 30th anniversary, 40th anniversary.
232. 00:09:14 Like, and they would call it that edition.
233. 00:09:15 So instead of like first, second, third edition,
234. 00:09:17 they would tell you how many years
235. 00:09:19 it's been impacting the production
236. 00:09:23 and manufacturing community.
237. 00:09:25 Now, you may think, what on earth could a 40 year old book
238. 00:09:30 still have, like could it still have application in a world today?
239. 00:09:33 I was talking to my students today in class,
240. 00:09:37 not like, and I didn't like see this,
241. 00:09:40 there wasn't anything there.
242. 00:09:42 We were talking about supply chains,
243. 00:09:45 and it came up, and there was this thing that came up,
244. 00:09:47 and I said, hey, have you ever read the goal?
245. 00:09:50 And my students have read the goal,
246. 00:09:53 and the reason why they've read the goal
247. 00:09:54 is because all the industrial engineers
248. 00:09:57 that the one person's internship was,
249. 00:10:00 they were all reading it the one summer,
250. 00:10:02 and they said, hey, you should read it with us.
251. 00:10:04 And then the other student that had read it,
252. 00:10:07 he had an internship this past summer,
253. 00:10:09 and his boss said, hey, you should really read this book,
254. 00:10:11 you should read the goal.
255. 00:10:12 So yes, it is still known, it is still used,
256. 00:10:16 it is still considered like a very, very relevant book
257. 00:10:21 in industry today.
258. 00:10:23 So even though it's 40 years old,
259. 00:10:24 it's still relevant today.
260. 00:10:26 I just wanna make sure people know that from now on.
261. 00:10:28 - Which is kind of wild, because you look at the cover
262. 00:10:31 and you're like, who is this guy?
263. 00:10:34 - Yes.
264. 00:10:35 - Like, I don't even know how to describe this picture
265. 00:10:38 on the front of this book.
266. 00:10:40 It's literally the author, I think,
267. 00:10:41 sitting at a desk or something,
268. 00:10:43 but it looks sort of like, I don't know,
269. 00:10:47 like a really bad stock photo from the 90s.
270. 00:10:53 It like, yeah, I agree with you completely.
271. 00:10:56 Blake said in the chat that there's a modern version
272. 00:10:59 for DevOps and IT called The Phoenix Project.
273. 00:11:01 This book like spurred on other books, right?
274. 00:11:04 It was like, it was truly a viral sensation.
275. 00:11:08 And based on the marketing,
276. 00:11:10 what Mike's describing to you,
277. 00:11:12 it had to be by word of mouth,
278. 00:11:14 because there is no marketing, right?
279. 00:11:16 Like there is no, you know,
280. 00:11:17 we read simple marketing for smart people.
281. 00:11:21 Like, Goldrat didn't have Billy Broass, right?
282. 00:11:24 Like he did not have like any of that stuff.
283. 00:11:27 It was basically just, he wrote a thing
284. 00:11:29 that turned into absolute gold
285. 00:11:32 in the really, really nerdy world that I live in.
286. 00:11:36 And it's awesome, like it's just taken off, so.
287. 00:11:39 - And it sold like 10 million copies or something like that
288. 00:11:42 is what it says on the front.
289. 00:11:44 - And it spawned a consulting company.
290. 00:11:46 Like it's done, you know, it's done all kind of crazy things.
291. 00:11:50 So let's, let's get into kind of what it is.
292. 00:11:53 Mike, what is it, I forget what it's called
293. 00:11:55 when a book is like a story that teaches lessons.
294. 00:11:59 So it's like a fiction, what do they, an allegory?
295. 00:12:02 Like I don't, I don't-
296. 00:12:03 - Maybe, I don't know.
297. 00:12:04 The, the thing that came to mind for me was like,
298. 00:12:08 I've read a lot of these by Patrick Lencioni.
299. 00:12:10 - Yep.
300. 00:12:11 - And that's basically what it is.
301. 00:12:13 Is it's a story that teaches specific, I don't know.
302. 00:12:19 Like this one is almost 400 pages
303. 00:12:22 and there's only maybe 20 pages worth of framework type stuff.
304. 00:12:27 Like this is really what you gotta understand.
305. 00:12:30 I feel like Patrick Lencioni's are a little bit more dense,
306. 00:12:35 maybe in terms of the business knowledge
307. 00:12:38 that he's trying to get across.
308. 00:12:40 This one is very much narrative based.
309. 00:12:43 - Correct.
310. 00:12:44 - Which is not good or bad, just a little bit
311. 00:12:46 of a different feel, but that's sort of what it is.
312. 00:12:50 Is that sort of thing?
313. 00:12:51 I'm gonna tell you a narrative
314. 00:12:54 and I'm gonna make a point through this story.
315. 00:12:58 - And what makes this book difficult for bookworm
316. 00:13:01 is the story is 40 chapters.
317. 00:13:05 And like 35 of those chapters are kind of like building.
318. 00:13:11 So the last five chapters can actually teach you
319. 00:13:14 what I think you really, really wants to teach you.
320. 00:13:16 It's like giving you the evidence, like 35 chapters
321. 00:13:19 to then actually drive the point home.
322. 00:13:22 And then in the version that I read, Mike,
323. 00:13:24 there's an extra section that,
324. 00:13:27 what's beyond the goal was what it's called, right?
325. 00:13:30 So there's an extra section there.
326. 00:13:32 - The Toyota stuff.
327. 00:13:33 - Yep, and Hitachi engineering.
328. 00:13:35 And like it's the extra thing that where he kind of doubles
329. 00:13:38 down and he repeats everything in the book,
330. 00:13:40 but it's very much now I'm a faculty member
331. 00:13:43 and I'm gonna tell you like a real world case study.
332. 00:13:46 So it gets rid of the story.
333. 00:13:48 So that part was so weird.
334. 00:13:50 We could talk about when we get there,
335. 00:13:52 but the story art, by the way, for this
336. 00:13:55 is exactly what you would expect, you know?
337. 00:13:58 At the beginning, he's having problems at work.
338. 00:14:01 It's affecting every area of his life.
339. 00:14:04 He's having marriage problems at home.
340. 00:14:06 Like I have heard this script before.
341. 00:14:08 By the end, there's this revelation
342. 00:14:12 and it fixes everything.
343. 00:14:14 - Everything, yep, everything.
344. 00:14:15 Okay, so, hey, we were talking about,
345. 00:14:17 like it's a little bit weird of book.
346. 00:14:19 So we're not gonna go chapter by chapter
347. 00:14:20 'cause one, there's 40 chapters.
348. 00:14:22 And two, some of the chapters are only really
349. 00:14:25 to drive home like one small point.
350. 00:14:26 So what we're gonna do here is we are going to go
351. 00:14:29 kind of idea by idea or like major subplot
352. 00:14:33 by major subplot and we're gonna work our way
353. 00:14:36 to those enduring principles at the very, very end.
354. 00:14:40 And we're gonna give you the like,
355. 00:14:41 I don't know, five or six enduring principles
356. 00:14:43 that he really wants to drive home.
357. 00:14:46 Mike, I'm gonna let you kind of figure out
358. 00:14:47 how much we wanna talk about the Oh-No
359. 00:14:49 and Toyota production system and Hitachi Engineering,
360. 00:14:51 which is like the thing I would teach in class, right?
361. 00:14:55 Like that's how I would teach this in class.
362. 00:14:57 And just so everybody knows, this is exactly something
363. 00:15:01 that we would talk about in my classes, right?
364. 00:15:03 So this is why when Mike offered to read the goal,
365. 00:15:06 I had already read it before.
366. 00:15:08 I got to read it again and I say that meaningfully,
367. 00:15:11 I got to read it again, right?
368. 00:15:12 Like it wasn't I had to read it again.
369. 00:15:14 I got to read it again.
370. 00:15:16 And it was just as good.
371. 00:15:17 Like it's just as good of a book.
372. 00:15:18 So let's get into it.
373. 00:15:20 A guy named Alex Rogo has a plant.
374. 00:15:23 The plant is essentially failing, okay?
375. 00:15:26 So you start the book and the plant is failing
376. 00:15:30 and he's trying to think about like what's he gonna do?
377. 00:15:32 They give him a timeline, he goes and meets with his boss
378. 00:15:35 and he give him a timeline and said,
379. 00:15:36 do you have three months to turn things around, right?
380. 00:15:39 So like that's where we start out.
381. 00:15:40 We start out the book and it's very much like,
382. 00:15:44 I'm actually kind of fascinated that a management professional,
383. 00:15:49 I don't remember if Goldrats was a faculty member or not,
384. 00:15:52 but like somebody could actually write a fiction narrative
385. 00:15:56 as well as he did and also be as nerdy as he is, right?
386. 00:15:59 Like I think it's actually pretty impressive that he did it.
387. 00:16:02 Now, parts of it were super cheesy.
388. 00:16:04 We're gonna talk about that in style and rating.
389. 00:16:06 But overall, I think like he does a really good job
390. 00:16:10 like set in the stage, making you care about Alex,
391. 00:16:13 making you care about the plant problem.
392. 00:16:15 Like I think he does a really good job at it.
393. 00:16:18 - I think I agree, okay.
394. 00:16:20 So a little bit of additional detail here
395. 00:16:23 with that beginning story.
396. 00:16:25 It starts with Alex coming into work at the plant,
397. 00:16:29 everything's behind.
398. 00:16:31 They're trying to choose which of the super late orders
399. 00:16:36 they should be focused on right now.
400. 00:16:39 His boss, Bill Peach shows up and he's basically,
401. 00:16:44 I need this order done.
402. 00:16:46 So he comes in and he disrupts a whole bunch of stuff
403. 00:16:48 just to get his order done.
404. 00:16:49 And then basically lays the ultimatum.
405. 00:16:51 Like you gotta clean this up if this can't keep happening.
406. 00:16:55 And so he's like, yeah, I want it to be better.
407. 00:16:58 I don't know what to do.
408. 00:17:00 There are a couple of other characters in the story
409. 00:17:03 at the plant who are responsible
410. 00:17:08 for different parts of the operations.
411. 00:17:12 I'm not sure we need to get into too much of that,
412. 00:17:14 but there's Stacy who is like all of the--
413. 00:17:19 - She's productivity, she's the productivity.
414. 00:17:21 - Yeah, kind of like the operations, procedures,
415. 00:17:26 documentation, all that kind of stuff.
416. 00:17:28 There's, I forget the name of the guy
417. 00:17:30 who's like actually on the floor.
418. 00:17:32 - Oh, don't of it.
419. 00:17:32 - Bill, Bob, okay, yeah.
420. 00:17:34 Yep, he ends up taking over the plant at the end
421. 00:17:37 when things are going really well.
422. 00:17:39 And our illustrious hero is moving up the chain.
423. 00:17:47 But yeah, you're just like thrown into this frantic world
424. 00:17:51 where like they don't even know what to do next.
425. 00:17:55 Everything's late, everything's behind.
426. 00:17:57 No matter what you do, it's not good enough.
427. 00:18:00 And now you've got your boss who's showing up
428. 00:18:01 and being like, hey, get your crap together.
429. 00:18:04 - Yep, okay, so Martin reminded me that he was a physicist.
430. 00:18:08 So trained physicist who turned into a management,
431. 00:18:11 professional management consultant,
432. 00:18:12 like a business consultant.
433. 00:18:14 That's gold rat, that's who gold rat was.
434. 00:18:16 Okay, so you introduce, he introduces very quickly
435. 00:18:21 some concepts that we would term in the manufacturing world.
436. 00:18:24 And that's work in progress, inventory, and expediting.
437. 00:18:29 So if you don't know what these are,
438. 00:18:31 right, they can kind of throw you for a loop.
439. 00:18:32 But basically what happens is work in progress is
440. 00:18:35 anything between the start of production
441. 00:18:37 and shipping it to the customer, right?
442. 00:18:40 You would consider that work in progress, right?
443. 00:18:42 So it's at some phase of the manufacturing process.
444. 00:18:45 So then you build up inventory.
445. 00:18:47 And inventory's funny because you can build up
446. 00:18:50 what we call finished goods inventory
447. 00:18:51 where it's completely done and you put it on a shelf
448. 00:18:53 until it's ready to be packaged and sent out.
449. 00:18:55 Or you can have like inventory at different like phases.
450. 00:18:58 So before a machine, you can build up a bunch of inventory
451. 00:19:02 of something that needs to run through that machine.
452. 00:19:04 Then expediting is basically like,
453. 00:19:07 when Bill Peach comes in and Bill Peach says,
454. 00:19:09 what are you doing with order 41724 or whatever it is?
455. 00:19:12 Like he says the number, like, you know,
456. 00:19:14 or he reads the number a bunch of times.
457. 00:19:16 And basically you then go, you'd stop everything else
458. 00:19:19 no matter what you're doing and you'd go figure out
459. 00:19:21 what the status of that order is.
460. 00:19:23 And then you would get that order through the system.
461. 00:19:25 Which me, as an engineer, right,
462. 00:19:28 as industrial engineering person goes, efficiencies die.
463. 00:19:33 Like you absolutely lose efficiencies
464. 00:19:35 because what we wanna do is we wanna either batch process
465. 00:19:38 orders or if we're a highly, highly efficient thing
466. 00:19:41 we've got a flow line.
467. 00:19:42 You know, we've got an autonomous line that's flowing
468. 00:19:45 and you're not messing that line up for anything, right?
469. 00:19:47 Like, 'cause if that line goes down,
470. 00:19:49 now we start to increase cycle times
471. 00:19:51 and things go really, really bad.
472. 00:19:52 So when you expedite orders,
473. 00:19:53 you're constantly disrupting flow.
474. 00:19:55 You're constantly disrupting flow.
475. 00:19:57 Which gets us to, he's got this problem.
476. 00:20:01 Mike, help me remember.
477. 00:20:02 I think he has to fly on a plane to go somewhere.
478. 00:20:05 I don't remember why he has to fly on the plane, though.
479. 00:20:08 Do you?
480. 00:20:10 - I don't remember.
481. 00:20:13 Are you talking about where he meets up with Joe?
482. 00:20:15 - 'Cause he's gonna meet Jonah now, right?
483. 00:20:17 He's gonna reconnect with Jonah.
484. 00:20:18 And, anyhow, he's in the airport
485. 00:20:20 'cause he had to fly somewhere.
486. 00:20:21 Some meeting, I forget what it was for.
487. 00:20:23 And he meets Jonah and Jonah.
488. 00:20:26 So actually, so I remember a couple details about this
489. 00:20:28 and I remember thinking it was weird
490. 00:20:30 because Jonah needed to fly somewhere.
491. 00:20:33 Jonah was somebody that he went to school with.
492. 00:20:36 He bumps into Jonah at some place
493. 00:20:39 and they start talking.
494. 00:20:42 And then Jonah's like, "I gotta go."
495. 00:20:45 But he's asking him questions about the purpose of the plant
496. 00:20:49 and that's where we get into the reason
497. 00:20:54 that the plant exists, really productivity equals,
498. 00:20:57 making money, there's three measurements
499. 00:20:59 for making money, net profit, ROI, and cash flow.
500. 00:21:03 And we can dig into those if you really want.
501. 00:21:07 But basically, he's following Jonah
502. 00:21:08 all the way up to the gate where he is getting on the plane.
503. 00:21:13 So you could never do that now.
504. 00:21:15 Like through TSA, through the terminal, all the way up to,
505. 00:21:20 he's boarding the plane.
506. 00:21:21 And that's where Jonah's like, "I gotta leave you now."
507. 00:21:25 And then, "Okay, well, can I call you later?"
508. 00:21:27 Because the questions that he asks gets his wheels turning
509. 00:21:31 and that kinda leads to him uncovering the secret sauce
510. 00:21:35 in terms of saving the plant.
511. 00:21:37 - Exactly, so our chat rooms helping us big time here
512. 00:21:39 because he went to speak in Dallas.
513. 00:21:42 I didn't remember Dallas at all.
514. 00:21:43 He had to speak about the effectiveness of robots
515. 00:21:46 and he sees him in the airport lounge.
516. 00:21:48 He remembers him because he was his grad school advisor
517. 00:21:52 or grad school teacher or something like that.
518. 00:21:55 And then, there's another scene later
519. 00:21:58 where he meets him in a hotel.
520. 00:22:00 Like he flies to a hotel just to have a conversation with him,
521. 00:22:03 just to have breakfast with him
522. 00:22:04 'cause he's in the middle of all these meetings.
523. 00:22:06 So Jonah, he's a physicist, he's a business consultant.
524. 00:22:10 He reconnects with this guy
525. 00:22:12 and basically just starts to tell him
526. 00:22:14 all the problems that he's having.
527. 00:22:15 And then Jonah is the wise sage.
528. 00:22:18 Like he's basically meant to represent the author.
529. 00:22:22 And the interesting thing about Jonah,
530. 00:22:23 which we're gonna get to at the very end of the book
531. 00:22:25 is Jonah doesn't directly answer any questions.
532. 00:22:29 Jonah asks more questions
533. 00:22:31 and he gives definitions to things, right?
534. 00:22:34 Like so if you're looking for Jonah
535. 00:22:36 to like just tell him all the answers,
536. 00:22:38 nope, what bothers me about this whole situation
537. 00:22:41 is early in the book,
538. 00:22:43 Jonah says, "Just pay me whatever value I provide to you."
539. 00:22:47 And he goes, "Well, what value, how am I gonna know that?"
540. 00:22:49 And he goes, "You'll know," right?
541. 00:22:51 And they never finish that.
542. 00:22:54 They never close that loop.
543. 00:22:55 We don't ever find out what Jonah gets paid
544. 00:22:58 and Dagon at Jonah helped him save the day
545. 00:23:02 and Jonah needed paid about, I don't know,
546. 00:23:04 multiple millions of dollars from Alex Rogo.
547. 00:23:08 But that's just a pet peeve I have
548. 00:23:10 because they never finished that.
549. 00:23:12 They never square that circle.
550. 00:23:14 - Okay. - Yeah.
551. 00:23:15 I agree with that, I had that question too.
552. 00:23:18 - Okay, so as he's talking to Jonah
553. 00:23:20 and then he's thinking and he's talking to Jonah
554. 00:23:23 and then he's thinking and then he's talking
555. 00:23:24 to the employees and the factory, Lou and Bob
556. 00:23:26 and all these other people,
557. 00:23:28 we're learning about concepts, right?
558. 00:23:30 So the goal rat is introducing us to concepts.
559. 00:23:33 So the core concepts I would say at first
560. 00:23:35 would be throughput, inventory and operational expense.
561. 00:23:38 So we learn about the idea that like,
562. 00:23:40 what's the point of a company?
563. 00:23:41 The point of a company is to make money.
564. 00:23:44 How do you make money? You actually get product
565. 00:23:46 through the company and you sell the product.
566. 00:23:50 What is inventory?
567. 00:23:52 Well, inventory is anything between start and finish, right?
568. 00:23:55 You can count that as inventory.
569. 00:23:56 And later on in the book,
570. 00:23:58 they'll talk about inventory is that a lot of companies
571. 00:24:01 will think of inventory as like a positive,
572. 00:24:04 like as an asset and really inventory is a liability, right?
573. 00:24:08 Like and you want to think about it differently.
574. 00:24:10 So like they end up doing different calculations
575. 00:24:12 and that's a whole like kind of sub-story line
576. 00:24:16 is he and Lou and Stacey figuring out
577. 00:24:19 like how to recalculate different metrics
578. 00:24:22 and then present those metrics in a different way.
579. 00:24:25 And like sometimes they do it borderline unethically,
580. 00:24:28 if not completely unethically.
581. 00:24:30 And then sometimes they have to convince their bosses
582. 00:24:32 about these metrics.
583. 00:24:34 Okay, sorry, I got distracted.
584. 00:24:35 And then operational expense is basically any kind of money
585. 00:24:38 we need to put into converting inputs into final product
586. 00:24:42 and getting it, getting it out the door.
587. 00:24:44 But those are the three key metrics
588. 00:24:46 that you need to pay attention to,
589. 00:24:47 throughput, inventory and operational expense.
590. 00:24:50 And that's like a huge big learning for him.
591. 00:24:53 And he's like, oh my goodness, like this is crazy.
592. 00:24:55 Yeah, and this is, I mean, I've heard these terms before
593. 00:24:58 and it also kind of, I mentioned the three measurements
594. 00:25:01 for making money, the net profit, ROI,
595. 00:25:04 return on an investment and then cash flow.
596. 00:25:06 I remember when I was an integrator
597. 00:25:09 for the digital marketing firm
598. 00:25:12 learning the difference between net profit and cash flow.
599. 00:25:14 Like these are different things
600. 00:25:17 and they are both important.
601. 00:25:19 And really it's like, which one are you optimizing for?
602. 00:25:21 What's the difference to a net profit and cash flow?
603. 00:25:24 Well, if it takes your accounts receivable,
604. 00:25:27 so we're working with companies, right,
605. 00:25:30 to do digital marketing, we send them monthly retainers.
606. 00:25:32 If it takes them 30 days, 60 days, whatever,
607. 00:25:35 in order to pay, then we can say,
608. 00:25:39 you know, we've billed so much,
609. 00:25:42 but we don't have that cash in the bank.
610. 00:25:45 So if we have to pay a bill tomorrow,
611. 00:25:51 that may not be available.
612. 00:25:54 And so you sort of have to pay attention
613. 00:25:56 to not just what is coming in eventually,
614. 00:25:59 but what is actually available to be spent right now.
615. 00:26:03 And this is getting to like a level of granularity
616. 00:26:07 that probably most people will never have to care about.
617. 00:26:13 The critical measurements that you mentioned,
618. 00:26:16 the throughput, the inventory, the operational expenses.
619. 00:26:21 Again, this is, they're gonna go really deep
620. 00:26:24 into like specific details on these,
621. 00:26:27 which for the wrong type of person, I'll say,
622. 00:26:31 they just won't care at all.
623. 00:26:32 So if you're listening to this podcast already
624. 00:26:35 and you're like, oh, this is way over my head
625. 00:26:37 and I don't care to figure it out,
626. 00:26:39 stop, go ahead and stop listening.
627. 00:26:41 This book is not for you.
628. 00:26:43 I kind of find this stuff fascinating.
629. 00:26:46 And the viewing inventory, not as an asset,
630. 00:26:49 but as a liability,
631. 00:26:51 that's sort of one of the big story points
632. 00:26:53 that gets unpacked throughout the narrative.
633. 00:26:56 And the reason that they make that switch
634. 00:26:59 is because when you view it as an asset,
635. 00:27:02 really anything that you make
636. 00:27:04 that you could potentially sell,
637. 00:27:05 you feel like that is net positive.
638. 00:27:08 That's a good, good thing, right?
639. 00:27:11 But if you have all this stuff,
640. 00:27:13 especially manufacturing, you've got it finished.
641. 00:27:16 Now you have to house it somewhere.
642. 00:27:19 You gotta have like a warehouse where you have all this stuff
643. 00:27:21 and you gotta be able to go pick exactly what you need.
644. 00:27:24 And so what happens in this particular story
645. 00:27:27 with the inventory is,
646. 00:27:28 well, we gotta have some of this,
647. 00:27:29 some of this, some of this, some of this.
648. 00:27:31 There's only a couple of things
649. 00:27:32 that actually end up selling over and over and over again.
650. 00:27:34 And those orders tend to be waiting forever
651. 00:27:37 because there's no inventory for those specific things.
652. 00:27:40 And so the whole goal here
653. 00:27:43 and really the definition of the throughput,
654. 00:27:45 the rate at which the system generates money through sales
655. 00:27:49 is how do we actually get something from the beginning
656. 00:27:52 to the end of this production line?
657. 00:27:56 And the whole book is this narrative
658. 00:27:58 on all of these different things that they're trying
659. 00:28:01 and all these tweaks that they're making
660. 00:28:03 in order to make that whole,
661. 00:28:05 you mentioned the word flow before.
662. 00:28:08 So basically how that stuff flows
663. 00:28:11 through the entire system as quickly as possible.
664. 00:28:14 So if you don't have a whole lot of inventory,
665. 00:28:16 you don't have a whole bunch of things backing up,
666. 00:28:19 we'll get into the whole concept of bottlenecks
667. 00:28:20 at some point in the near future.
668. 00:28:23 Like then things can just flow optimally
669. 00:28:26 and that's really what they're after here.
670. 00:28:29 It's a little bit different way to think about it.
671. 00:28:34 And I think there is a lot of general application
672. 00:28:37 to this concept, which is why I think
673. 00:28:40 this is a cool topic for Bookworm.
674. 00:28:43 Really if you have any interest in like how business works,
675. 00:28:46 this is important stuff to understand.
676. 00:28:49 But at the beginning of the book,
677. 00:28:50 it can definitely feel like,
678. 00:28:51 ah, there is just too much going on here.
679. 00:28:54 I feel just like Alex does completely overwhelmed
680. 00:28:56 by all this stuff and I need to wrap my head around it.
681. 00:29:00 So Jonah, by the way we mentioned Jonah earlier,
682. 00:29:02 he's sort of the savior character in this story.
683. 00:29:07 He just like pops in from time to time.
684. 00:29:10 When things are really bad, Alex will call him
685. 00:29:12 and he'll answer and you know,
686. 00:29:13 midnight in London where he is.
687. 00:29:15 And I've only got five minutes before I go do this
688. 00:29:18 really impressive thing.
689. 00:29:19 But I'm happy to talk to you about this, you know.
690. 00:29:21 It's kind of kind of weird.
691. 00:29:23 But you get like these little bits and pieces
692. 00:29:26 of the narrative delivered that way
693. 00:29:28 and then like opens up some things like,
694. 00:29:30 that's all I got time for right now.
695. 00:29:31 And then Alex has to go and unpack and figure out,
696. 00:29:34 you know, what does this actually actually mean?
697. 00:29:36 - Yeah.
698. 00:29:37 Okay, so there's a couple underlying ideas
699. 00:29:41 that they don't really talk about,
700. 00:29:44 one of them they talk about in the book,
701. 00:29:45 one of them they don't talk about in the book.
702. 00:29:47 But you learn about it when you read the very end
703. 00:29:50 of the book and you read beyond the goal
704. 00:29:52 that basically Goldrat was very, very strongly influenced
705. 00:29:56 by what's called the Toyota production system.
706. 00:29:58 And the Toyota production system
707. 00:30:00 was this just in time production system
708. 00:30:03 and it was this system of constant improvement,
709. 00:30:05 of ongoing improvement.
710. 00:30:06 So the sub line for this book is a process
711. 00:30:08 of continuous improvement or a process
712. 00:30:10 of ongoing improvement or something like that.
713. 00:30:13 And he's like fascinated by this idea, Goldrat is, right?
714. 00:30:16 So he's trying to bring this in,
715. 00:30:20 which is where you get this idea
716. 00:30:23 of like flow through the system
717. 00:30:25 because that's really what they got good at.
718. 00:30:28 Is they got good at like optimizing flow
719. 00:30:31 through the system.
720. 00:30:32 Another company that got really, really good at it
721. 00:30:34 and really changed the entire industry would be like Dell.
722. 00:30:38 When Dell was in their prime, Dell computer,
723. 00:30:41 they were super good at just in time.
724. 00:30:44 Like you would put an order in for a custom configured computer
725. 00:30:48 and they had a way to where like there was minimal time
726. 00:30:52 between you hitting the order button
727. 00:30:54 and it being in a box on its way like shipped to you.
728. 00:30:58 So like this just in time idea, huge.
729. 00:31:00 Like it changed the way you manufacture things.
730. 00:31:02 It changed the way you got products,
731. 00:31:05 received products, all of those things.
732. 00:31:07 The second principle that they talk a little bit more about
733. 00:31:10 is this idea of local efficiencies versus throughput.
734. 00:31:13 And this would have been revolutionary
735. 00:31:16 for the time that he wrote this book
736. 00:31:19 and the like legacy or the long-term impact
737. 00:31:22 of local efficiency thinking still impacts today.
738. 00:31:27 So like if you think about it
739. 00:31:28 from a capital investment standpoint,
740. 00:31:31 I'm gonna buy a new machine.
741. 00:31:33 It's gonna cost $250,000, right, for the machine.
742. 00:31:37 And what I'm thinking about is I just spent $250,000
743. 00:31:40 on the machine.
744. 00:31:41 I want the utilization of that machine to be super high.
745. 00:31:45 I want that to be like 90% utilized or whatever it might be.
746. 00:31:49 And there are like we have calculations
747. 00:31:51 that I'll teach the students about how we calculate that
748. 00:31:55 when we consider downtime and we consider repair time
749. 00:31:58 and setup and tooling and all those other things.
750. 00:32:00 But like we want that machine to be producing
751. 00:32:03 as much as possible.
752. 00:32:04 And what he drives home here is that sometimes
753. 00:32:08 a machine producing but not impacting the throughput
754. 00:32:13 of the overall operation is worse
755. 00:32:16 than it actually just being able to sit idly
756. 00:32:19 and letting the throughput drive the whole system
757. 00:32:23 and letting the essentially what we're gonna get
758. 00:32:24 is to the bottleneck, which gets us to what almost everybody
759. 00:32:28 will remember about this book.
760. 00:32:30 If you read this book, if you know of anybody who read this book,
761. 00:32:33 all you have to do is say, hey, have you read the goal?
762. 00:32:35 What do you think about Herbie?
763. 00:32:37 Right?
764. 00:32:38 So we're gonna get to Herbie and the Scouts
765. 00:32:40 because a thing we haven't talked about yet
766. 00:32:43 is like there's two different threads to this book.
767. 00:32:46 There's the plant side and the operation side.
768. 00:32:50 And then there's Alex's marriage and family life.
769. 00:32:53 And like you get this weird like tangent.
770. 00:32:56 It's almost like you go into a parallel universe
771. 00:32:58 and you start talking about Alex's marriage
772. 00:33:00 and his family life, which is terrible.
773. 00:33:02 Like, he is a really, really bad husband.
774. 00:33:05 He's a really, really bad dad.
775. 00:33:06 He's all he cares about is the plant.
776. 00:33:09 And all he does is he spends all his time at the plant
777. 00:33:11 and he's like, is never with his family
778. 00:33:13 and his wife obviously is getting upset about this
779. 00:33:16 and she's mad.
780. 00:33:17 Why do I tell you that whole thing is because
781. 00:33:19 there's a chapter in there where he has to take his kid
782. 00:33:22 on a hike for the Scouts, you know?
783. 00:33:25 Okay, so they're hiking on this thing
784. 00:33:27 and they're in this row.
785. 00:33:30 And as they're hiking, he notices that the row
786. 00:33:32 of hikers tends to spread out.
787. 00:33:35 So he starts to think about this
788. 00:33:36 'cause he's thinking about throughput
789. 00:33:38 and he's thinking about efficiencies
790. 00:33:39 and he's thinking about the way people hike
791. 00:33:41 and all this stuff.
792. 00:33:42 And then he'll notice that it'll kind of accordion back
793. 00:33:46 and then it'll kind of go out and it'll accordion back.
794. 00:33:48 And it all seems to revolve around this kid named Herbie.
795. 00:33:52 Herbie is an overweight kid.
796. 00:33:54 He is the slowest hiker by far in the Scout troop.
797. 00:33:59 So Alex starts to play games
798. 00:34:01 and he starts to like put Herbie in different places,
799. 00:34:04 like around the thing and he starts to see what happens
800. 00:34:07 and he's trying to figure out like what's going on.
801. 00:34:09 And all of this is a metaphor
802. 00:34:11 for what's happening in the plant.
803. 00:34:13 So like the spacing between people would be inventory.
804. 00:34:16 The more we're spaced out, the more inventory we have.
805. 00:34:19 Herbie is the bottleneck, right?
806. 00:34:21 He controls the pace because every time he has to tell
807. 00:34:24 the people in the front that are faster,
808. 00:34:27 hey, slow down for Herbie, the bottleneck
809. 00:34:29 is holding everything up.
810. 00:34:30 So it's like, it's a direct correlation with the Scout troop.
811. 00:34:34 The other thing it introduces.
812. 00:34:36 - Which by the way, like that whole thing is kind of weird
813. 00:34:39 to me because he's not available most of the time, right?
814. 00:34:43 He finally goes on this Scout trip
815. 00:34:46 and he gets put in charge.
816. 00:34:48 - Yeah.
817. 00:34:49 (laughing)
818. 00:34:50 - You know, right?
819. 00:34:50 So his goal is we got to get the whole troop 10 miles
820. 00:34:54 to this campsite by dark.
821. 00:34:56 And at the beginning, because of Herbie,
822. 00:34:58 they're way behind him.
823. 00:34:59 He's like, oh boy, how are we going to do this?
824. 00:35:01 - Which would be their behindness is lack of throughput.
825. 00:35:04 So like throughput in this situation
826. 00:35:06 is the entire group moving.
827. 00:35:08 Inventory in this situation is how spread out they are.
828. 00:35:11 And then expense is the amount of effort
829. 00:35:13 and every kid has to give, right?
830. 00:35:15 In order to do this because some kids
831. 00:35:16 are walking significantly slower than they could.
832. 00:35:19 Some kids are like running and then stopping
833. 00:35:21 and then running and then stopping, right?
834. 00:35:22 So these three concepts still apply.
835. 00:35:25 Now, like you said about him getting put in charge.
836. 00:35:27 If this was a movie, I would call this movie magic, right?
837. 00:35:30 Like this is one of those things that it's like,
838. 00:35:32 oh, why did that happen?
839. 00:35:33 Well, because the movie has to just make certain things happen.
840. 00:35:35 Well, so did the book.
841. 00:35:36 - Yeah.
842. 00:35:37 - The book had to put him in.
843. 00:35:38 So there's this principle or these three things
844. 00:35:41 that are demonstrated by Herbie.
845. 00:35:43 And then he also plays a matchstick game,
846. 00:35:45 which is yet another way to demonstrate this same principle.
847. 00:35:50 We introduce additional nerdy principles in here,
848. 00:35:54 which would be the idea of dependencies
849. 00:35:56 and then statistical fluctuation.
850. 00:35:58 Okay, so dependency is basically like one thing
851. 00:36:00 can't move in front of another.
852. 00:36:02 You know, like, oh, it's dependent on that process
853. 00:36:04 in front of it or behind it or whatever it might be.
854. 00:36:06 So Herbie is in the middle of the pack.
855. 00:36:08 The people in the front can't just keep going
856. 00:36:10 or else they're gonna run and be at the end of the hike.
857. 00:36:12 So they're dependent on Herbie, so they have to slow down.
858. 00:36:16 But at any given time, like nobody walks
859. 00:36:19 three miles per hour perfectly all the time,
860. 00:36:21 they're walking 2.3 miles per hour or 1.7 miles per hour
861. 00:36:25 or 1.8 miles per hour, which is the statistical fluctuation.
862. 00:36:28 The same thing is true in a plant.
863. 00:36:31 Every kid is essentially a work center in the plant
864. 00:36:35 and then you've got statistical fluctuation in there.
865. 00:36:37 So what I'm trying to describe to you
866. 00:36:40 is I'm trying to describe to you
867. 00:36:41 the insanely weird and amazing balance
868. 00:36:46 between really nerdy concepts
869. 00:36:50 and, like, a scout troop hiking or having matchsticks
870. 00:36:54 and, like, putting them in places
871. 00:36:56 and, like, watching the inventory build up on the matchsticks.
872. 00:36:59 Like, so it's kind of this mind-bend.
873. 00:37:02 It's really a weird book, right?
874. 00:37:04 That I love, but it's a really a weird book.
875. 00:37:08 - It really is.
876. 00:37:10 So the big aha moments from this hike
877. 00:37:15 were Herbie, who's carrying all this stuff.
878. 00:37:19 By the way, I put it in the chat.
879. 00:37:21 When I think about Herbie,
880. 00:37:23 I picture Russell from the movie "Up."
881. 00:37:26 - Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.
882. 00:37:27 That's really good, that's really good.
883. 00:37:29 - Right, he's got his big backpack with all his survival gear.
884. 00:37:32 So you've got a bunch of people
885. 00:37:34 and what ends up happening at the beginning
886. 00:37:36 is Alex is in the back trying to keep Herbie going.
887. 00:37:40 And when they stop, they talk about
888. 00:37:42 how Herbie's the bottleneck, essentially.
889. 00:37:45 We can only go as fast as Herbie can go.
890. 00:37:48 So let's put him in the front
891. 00:37:50 and he still can't go very fast.
892. 00:37:52 So maybe everybody else can help carry some of Herbie's gear.
893. 00:37:56 And now we've sort of smoothed things out
894. 00:37:58 and now they're starting to really make some time.
895. 00:38:03 And then that's the lesson that he takes back
896. 00:38:06 along with the matchstick game
897. 00:38:08 that they make up when they're camping
898. 00:38:10 that you alluded to, which is kind of wild.
899. 00:38:15 But the whole thing is weird to me
900. 00:38:18 because he's going to do this thing.
901. 00:38:20 He forgot that he said he was going to do it.
902. 00:38:22 By the time he comes back, his wife has left him.
903. 00:38:25 - Yes.
904. 00:38:27 - And I don't know, like, it's just a weird setup
905. 00:38:32 for that whole part of the narrative.
906. 00:38:35 - Absolutely, absolutely.
907. 00:38:37 I do not like the family wife side of this book, right?
908. 00:38:42 Like I just don't like it at all.
909. 00:38:44 - Yeah, it's weird, it's weird.
910. 00:38:46 - Okay, and by the way, I've heard those family narratives,
911. 00:38:50 like I mentioned, this is the story
912. 00:38:52 in a lot of these types of books.
913. 00:38:54 Business guy is pressured at work,
914. 00:38:57 having trouble at home,
915. 00:38:59 gets the revelation, fixes everything.
916. 00:39:03 This one in particular, though, really bothered me.
917. 00:39:08 And I think, I don't really know why.
918. 00:39:11 Like, I guess it's really because,
919. 00:39:16 well, I guess to put the bow on this,
920. 00:39:19 she leaves 'cause she's had enough.
921. 00:39:20 You can't really blame her for that.
922. 00:39:21 - Agreed.
923. 00:39:22 - She goes and she moves in with her parents,
924. 00:39:25 and he's trying to get her to come back home
925. 00:39:27 with him and the kids.
926. 00:39:29 So they have two kids, and he's continuing
927. 00:39:32 to get them to school, all that kind of stuff
928. 00:39:35 that he should have been doing in the first place,
929. 00:39:37 but he wasn't.
930. 00:39:38 Now, on top of all the business stuff,
931. 00:39:40 he's got to make it happen.
932. 00:39:42 And I don't know, just like, instantly all of a sudden,
933. 00:39:46 he's a good father, like, that part is weird, first of all.
934. 00:39:51 But then he goes and he tries to win his wife back,
935. 00:39:55 and they start dating again and whatever.
936. 00:39:58 But there is no resolution really to that part either,
937. 00:40:05 other than you can sort of see her attitude
938. 00:40:09 towards him change as things start to get better at work.
939. 00:40:14 Like, the whole thing is just weird.
940. 00:40:17 - Okay, so I think the whole point
941. 00:40:20 of the whole marriage side of this one is basically,
942. 00:40:24 he ends up having to figure out
943. 00:40:26 what's the goal of the marriage,
944. 00:40:28 and then what's the constraint of the marriage?
945. 00:40:30 So like, that's the whole point of this,
946. 00:40:32 is you can apply this principle to other things,
947. 00:40:34 not just a manufacturing plant.
948. 00:40:36 But man oh man, does it feel forced?
949. 00:40:38 And man oh man at times, does it just feel like
950. 00:40:42 what are we doing here, right?
951. 00:40:43 Like that, I am not a fan of the whole marriage side of this.
952. 00:40:46 I feel like it's a waste of time.
953. 00:40:48 Should have been a 350 minute look.
954. 00:40:50 - It is kind of a waste of time.
955. 00:40:51 I guess part of me, the question I have is,
956. 00:40:54 this is a 40 year old book, right?
957. 00:40:57 - Yep.
958. 00:40:58 - So maybe, maybe the traditional roles
959. 00:41:03 which are very, very prevalent in this narrative.
960. 00:41:08 - Yes, yes.
961. 00:41:09 - It had a little bit different in 1980 when it was written,
962. 00:41:14 than it does now.
963. 00:41:15 But I think of everything in the book,
964. 00:41:17 that's the part that doesn't age,
965. 00:41:19 that's my thought on that.
966. 00:41:20 Because when we get to the plant,
967. 00:41:23 you're talking about buying the machines and things,
968. 00:41:25 they have some specific robot machines
969. 00:41:28 that are gonna revolutionize the process,
970. 00:41:32 and they're not doing what they thought they were gonna do,
971. 00:41:35 and they recognize those are the bottlenecks,
972. 00:41:37 yadda yadda yadda, and what is the one?
973. 00:41:40 NC10 or something?
974. 00:41:41 - NC10. - NCX10, yep.
975. 00:41:43 - And the heat truth. - NCX10.
976. 00:41:45 - Yeah, which is probably just a made up thing.
977. 00:41:48 All of that stuff translated fine,
978. 00:41:50 but whenever we were talking about the family stuff,
979. 00:41:52 I was like, I cannot relate to this.
980. 00:41:55 - All right, so allow me to go in a little bit of a tangent here.
981. 00:41:59 One of the things I think is interesting,
982. 00:42:01 if you think about this book,
983. 00:42:03 and you think about the ideas of throughput inventory,
984. 00:42:05 and operational expense,
985. 00:42:06 and you think about it in terms of AI.
986. 00:42:09 Because everybody wants to use AI right now.
987. 00:42:13 AI is that like beautiful new toy.
988. 00:42:16 In the book, it would be robotics, right?
989. 00:42:18 Automation and robotics.
990. 00:42:20 Well, we're all using AI,
991. 00:42:21 and I wonder how many people who are incorporating AI
992. 00:42:25 into their business practices are going,
993. 00:42:28 is this actually increasing the throughput?
994. 00:42:32 Versus, is it making me more efficient?
995. 00:42:35 Now, remember, I think that is an enduring principle
996. 00:42:38 from this book that says if it's not increasing the throughput,
997. 00:42:41 and it's not helping you produce more of the thing
998. 00:42:44 that achieves your goal, or makes you money,
999. 00:42:47 the way Goldrat would put it, it's not effective.
1000. 00:42:50 You should not be doing that.
1001. 00:42:52 You're really, you're kind of just like,
1002. 00:42:56 I don't know, spinning your wheels,
1003. 00:42:58 and you think they look pretty,
1004. 00:43:00 but you're not going anywhere.
1005. 00:43:01 And I think AI right now,
1006. 00:43:03 there's a lot of people that are doing this.
1007. 00:43:06 They're using AI in a way
1008. 00:43:07 that does not increase their throughput.
1009. 00:43:10 It just makes it look cool,
1010. 00:43:12 and it makes it look more productive,
1011. 00:43:14 and it makes it look more efficient.
1012. 00:43:16 And I think that is a principle
1013. 00:43:18 that 100% applies to 2026.
1014. 00:43:22 Interesting, I can definitely see that approach to it.
1015. 00:43:25 I did not go there when I was reading it,
1016. 00:43:27 but that doesn't make sense.
1017. 00:43:30 Because there are a lot of people who are doing things
1018. 00:43:32 with AI, and there's probably a trap that I fall into too,
1019. 00:43:35 if I'm honest with myself and I'm not careful
1020. 00:43:37 about what is the actual job to be done here.
1021. 00:43:39 It's like, oh, I could do this thing.
1022. 00:43:40 Does that thing really need to be done?
1023. 00:43:42 Yes.
1024. 00:43:43 Or is it just complicating the process?
1025. 00:43:46 I think that's really the overall theme of this.
1026. 00:43:50 It's like, simplify the process, right?
1027. 00:43:54 Just get stuff to flow from one end to the other.
1028. 00:44:00 Do we want to talk about bottlenecks though?
1029. 00:44:01 Okay, so just so everybody knows,
1030. 00:44:03 we're in chapters like 1920-21, right?
1031. 00:44:07 So we're about halfway through the book at this point.
1032. 00:44:09 We take this hike that we took with the scouts,
1033. 00:44:12 and we start applying it directly to the plant
1034. 00:44:15 and the actual machines in the plant.
1035. 00:44:17 We identify two machines that they would consider
1036. 00:44:19 the bottleneck, right?
1037. 00:44:21 So it's the NCX10 machine and the heat treat machine.
1038. 00:44:23 And what ends up happening is they're getting a lot
1039. 00:44:25 of inventory that's building up right in front
1040. 00:44:27 of those machines.
1041. 00:44:28 And that's how they identify them as the bottleneck.
1042. 00:44:30 And they say, oh, well,
1043. 00:44:32 because we have so much inventory in front of these,
1044. 00:44:34 then they start to diagnose why?
1045. 00:44:36 Why are we getting so much inventory?
1046. 00:44:38 And this is where the efficiencies come in
1047. 00:44:39 is because the machines that are in front of those
1048. 00:44:42 or upstream, the way we would talk about it in my world,
1049. 00:44:45 like they happen before the NCX10 or before the heat treat,
1050. 00:44:48 those machines are running as high of an efficiency
1051. 00:44:52 as they can and they're over producing compared to the speed
1052. 00:44:56 of the overall plant, of the bottleneck operations.
1053. 00:45:00 So he starts to say, well, hold on,
1054. 00:45:02 we either need to speed up the bottlenecks
1055. 00:45:04 or we need to stop producing so much
1056. 00:45:06 so we have less inventory and less work in progress.
1057. 00:45:09 And it's like multiple chapters of them
1058. 00:45:11 like working through this and getting ideas
1059. 00:45:13 and then thinking about things and refining ideas.
1060. 00:45:15 And that's where you start to get this idea of, okay,
1061. 00:45:17 like how do we start to alleviate the bottleneck?
1062. 00:45:21 So the scout version of this is we start taking stuff
1063. 00:45:24 out of Herbie's pack that way Herbie can walk faster
1064. 00:45:27 and he's not so tired.
1065. 00:45:29 Well, in the NCX10, they get an older machine,
1066. 00:45:32 they bring it back and it can do the same functions
1067. 00:45:34 as the NCX10.
1068. 00:45:36 They start to outsource some of the heat treat stuff
1069. 00:45:39 so they can do that.
1070. 00:45:41 They then also introduce this priority system
1071. 00:45:44 and they start to say like, okay, well,
1072. 00:45:46 there are red priority parts that need processed first,
1073. 00:45:50 then I don't know if they went red, yellow, green
1074. 00:45:52 or what they did, but like there were multiple states.
1075. 00:45:53 - It was just red and green, I think.
1076. 00:45:55 - Okay, and the green ones basically,
1077. 00:45:57 the green ones were the ones you ran
1078. 00:45:59 unless a red part came through.
1079. 00:46:01 And if a red part came through, you ran the red parts
1080. 00:46:03 and this was all based on what orders needed
1081. 00:46:07 to be delivered the fastest.
1082. 00:46:09 Like what were the, we would call it lead time, right?
1083. 00:46:11 Like, so which ones need to get out of the factory
1084. 00:46:13 as fast as they can?
1085. 00:46:15 And the reason why I'm going into this much detail
1086. 00:46:18 on this is because when he gets to the very, very end
1087. 00:46:20 and they're trying to learn all this stuff,
1088. 00:46:23 he has this three-point principle called drum buffer rope
1089. 00:46:27 and drum buffer rope is what he's describing here
1090. 00:46:30 is there's the drum beat and the drum beat is the bottleneck.
1091. 00:46:34 It's how fast things can go through the bottleneck
1092. 00:46:36 or he's later gonna broaden it out and call it a constraint.
1093. 00:46:40 But how fast things can go through the bottleneck,
1094. 00:46:42 the buffer is that inventory that builds up in front of it,
1095. 00:46:45 right?
1096. 00:46:46 And the inventory you make intentionally
1097. 00:46:48 so the bottleneck never stops.
1098. 00:46:50 You don't ever want the bottleneck operation to stop.
1099. 00:46:53 And then the rope is the signal that feeds back
1100. 00:46:56 to the very beginning that says, okay,
1101. 00:46:58 it's time to start making more of the things upstream
1102. 00:47:01 that way the bottleneck doesn't run out of parts.
1103. 00:47:03 And it's like, this is the, is a crux of his thinking.
1104. 00:47:08 Is we need all of these.
1105. 00:47:09 You need, you're always gonna have a bottleneck.
1106. 00:47:11 So you're always gonna have a drum beat.
1107. 00:47:13 You're always gonna have a buffer
1108. 00:47:15 that something's just gonna build up somewhere in the system.
1109. 00:47:17 And you always need a feedback signal that goes back
1110. 00:47:20 to the beginning and tells, okay, start making more parts,
1111. 00:47:23 start making more, like, start doing more production.
1112. 00:47:25 And like that is a major through point up until,
1113. 00:47:30 like, I don't know, chapter 30, 31, something like that.
1114. 00:47:34 So like we drive like a bunch of chapters through this.
1115. 00:47:38 We then get to this client who is upset
1116. 00:47:43 at the beginning of the book comes in and says,
1117. 00:47:46 hey, I got this order, this other company can't fill it.
1118. 00:47:50 Can you all fill it?
1119. 00:47:51 And it's like a ridiculous monster order,
1120. 00:47:54 1,000 parts or something like that.
1121. 00:47:55 I mean, it's just absolutely dumb, right?
1122. 00:47:57 In terms of like, there's no way they should ever be able
1123. 00:47:59 to do it.
1124. 00:48:00 And he goes, yeah, like we're gonna take this order
1125. 00:48:03 because what they realized is they realized
1126. 00:48:05 that their whole plant had higher throughput
1127. 00:48:09 and then the new bottleneck was orders.
1128. 00:48:13 They were able to fill all of these orders
1129. 00:48:16 in a shorter time than basically the rest
1130. 00:48:18 of the industry was able to fill them.
1131. 00:48:20 So now their limiting factor was we need more orders.
1132. 00:48:24 If we don't have more orders,
1133. 00:48:25 we're not able to process more parts
1134. 00:48:27 because we gotta have the orders.
1135. 00:48:28 So he takes on this ridiculously wacky invoice
1136. 00:48:33 and they end up fulfilling it, right?
1137. 00:48:35 So you kinda go into this like, again, it's super nerdy
1138. 00:48:39 and you're learning different things
1139. 00:48:41 and they do it in increments
1140. 00:48:42 and they decrease the batch sizes
1141. 00:48:44 and the whole time they're learning about this process
1142. 00:48:46 and they're trying to figure out this process.
1143. 00:48:48 So at this point, I'll stop 'cause I've been talking a while.
1144. 00:48:50 But Mike, what do you have to add in this middle
1145. 00:48:54 10 chapter section?
1146. 00:48:56 - I mean, there's so much stuff here
1147. 00:48:58 that is kinda like unnecessarily complex to me.
1148. 00:49:03 The big idea of the bottlenecks, that part,
1149. 00:49:06 I understand and that resonates.
1150. 00:49:09 Like a bottleneck is any resource whose capacity
1151. 00:49:12 is equal to or less than the demand placed on it.
1152. 00:49:16 So when it comes to me and my creator business,
1153. 00:49:21 my application to this is, and I've actually done this
1154. 00:49:25 as a consultant with people before,
1155. 00:49:28 what are the different stages of your business?
1156. 00:49:31 So for me, it's borrowed attention.
1157. 00:49:34 That is the social media platform.
1158. 00:49:37 So that's like, that's my YouTube channel.
1159. 00:49:39 And then I've got the lead magnet there.
1160. 00:49:41 So people will download that, they'll get it on my email list.
1161. 00:49:44 Now I can reach them directly.
1162. 00:49:47 So we go from borrowed attention to owned attention.
1163. 00:49:49 And there's a number of social followers
1164. 00:49:53 and then a number of email subscribers.
1165. 00:49:55 And so there's like a percentage there
1166. 00:49:57 of people who go from one step to the next.
1167. 00:50:00 That's one potential bottleneck.
1168. 00:50:02 And then there is the people on the email list
1169. 00:50:05 and the people who would sign up for like a wait list
1170. 00:50:08 when I launch our product.
1171. 00:50:09 There's a thing there where we are building trust.
1172. 00:50:12 I'm sending the newsletter every single week.
1173. 00:50:14 I've described my newsletter as my most important product
1174. 00:50:17 and that's why.
1175. 00:50:20 So not everybody who's on the newsletter
1176. 00:50:22 is necessarily someone who knows, likes, and trusts me
1177. 00:50:26 at this point yet.
1178. 00:50:27 So I'm continuing to show up consistently
1179. 00:50:30 in an inbox, hopefully.
1180. 00:50:32 So that by the time I actually have something to sell,
1181. 00:50:35 if it meets a need that somebody has,
1182. 00:50:37 they want to buy what I have.
1183. 00:50:39 So then like how many people are opening those emails
1184. 00:50:42 and actually reading those?
1185. 00:50:43 That's another potential bottleneck.
1186. 00:50:45 And then for the people who are ultimately on that,
1187. 00:50:48 that wait list, they're interested in the thing that I have.
1188. 00:50:50 Okay, here are the sales emails that's now available.
1189. 00:50:52 How many people actually make that leap
1190. 00:50:53 and actually buy the product?
1191. 00:50:55 Again, another potential bottleneck.
1192. 00:50:57 So you measure these different things
1193. 00:50:59 and you figure out this percentage right here,
1194. 00:51:02 this one isn't very good.
1195. 00:51:03 That's where the first bottleneck is
1196. 00:51:05 as you're going from top to bottom in this funnel.
1197. 00:51:07 So let's figure out, maybe we can try
1198. 00:51:09 some different lead magnets.
1199. 00:51:10 Try to get that percentage to go a little bit higher.
1200. 00:51:14 And so you try some things,
1201. 00:51:15 you figure out something that works.
1202. 00:51:17 Okay, that one is fixed.
1203. 00:51:19 Now, where's the next bottleneck?
1204. 00:51:20 And that's like as far as I take the application here.
1205. 00:51:25 I care nothing about how many parts
1206. 00:51:28 are building up at the front of this bottleneck.
1207. 00:51:32 - It breaks down, 'cause I do the same thing
1208. 00:51:34 for my faculty work.
1209. 00:51:37 And like the metaphor breaks down,
1210. 00:51:39 the way he's describing it
1211. 00:51:41 and the way he's outlining it,
1212. 00:51:42 it really is more for a manufacturing organization.
1213. 00:51:45 There are things you can take away like you've done,
1214. 00:51:48 but it really does break down in certain industries
1215. 00:51:50 and in certain different ways.
1216. 00:51:52 Later on, we're gonna talk about stuff
1217. 00:51:53 that I don't think does break down.
1218. 00:51:55 I think stays true.
1219. 00:51:57 All right, are you ready to get to the next part?
1220. 00:52:00 - I think so.
1221. 00:52:01 I guess there's a couple other things
1222. 00:52:04 I jotted down here,
1223. 00:52:08 which I probably should talk about these
1224. 00:52:10 before we get to the next section.
1225. 00:52:11 So there's a couple of themes that are present here.
1226. 00:52:16 Number one, make sure none of the bottlenecks time is wasted.
1227. 00:52:19 So once you identify the bottleneck
1228. 00:52:21 in terms of the machine,
1229. 00:52:22 that's why they brought in the old machine
1230. 00:52:24 because the new machine was doing everything.
1231. 00:52:26 Oh, it could do it so much faster.
1232. 00:52:27 It's more efficient, isn't this great?
1233. 00:52:29 No, because that new machine
1234. 00:52:32 can do some things that the old machines couldn't,
1235. 00:52:34 but there are some things that we are selling
1236. 00:52:36 that we have sold for a long time.
1237. 00:52:38 So if we bring in one of those old machines,
1238. 00:52:40 we can offload some of those old products
1239. 00:52:44 and the new machine now can focus on the new stuff
1240. 00:52:46 that everybody's waiting for.
1241. 00:52:48 Okay, great.
1242. 00:52:49 And then the other thing is that increasing bottleneck
1243. 00:52:52 capacity by taking some of the load
1244. 00:52:54 and giving it to non-bottlenecks.
1245. 00:52:55 I'm not quite sure exactly what that looks like for me,
1246. 00:52:58 but if everything is backing up at this one bottleneck,
1247. 00:53:01 that's what the second machine does.
1248. 00:53:02 You take some of that and you move it over here.
1249. 00:53:05 Now you've got a level of utilization
1250. 00:53:07 that is a little bit better.
1251. 00:53:09 Can I tell you what this is for you?
1252. 00:53:11 Sure. You just did this.
1253. 00:53:13 So you 100% just did this.
1254. 00:53:15 The bottleneck at certain parts of your operation
1255. 00:53:18 are you making videos and you making content.
1256. 00:53:20 That's true, that's true.
1257. 00:53:21 And what did you do?
1258. 00:53:22 You offloaded some of the work from the bottleneck
1259. 00:53:25 to a virtual assistant.
1260. 00:53:27 And the virtual assistant now handles some of that,
1261. 00:53:29 which allows you to have more capacity to do video production.
1262. 00:53:33 Like you 100% just did that version of this.
1263. 00:53:37 Yeah, no, you're right.
1264. 00:53:40 I didn't think about it that way,
1265. 00:53:42 but I definitely did.
1266. 00:53:43 And then of course, life life me
1267. 00:53:45 and I didn't crank up videos anyways, but.
1268. 00:53:48 No, but that's different.
1269. 00:53:49 Like that's an external factor, right?
1270. 00:53:51 Like that is exactly-
1271. 00:53:53 That increased my throughput, I guess.
1272. 00:53:58 There's one other thing here though,
1273. 00:53:59 about putting Herbie at the front of the line.
1274. 00:54:04 Because as I was reading this,
1275. 00:54:05 I was taking Joshua to his young writer's retreat.
1276. 00:54:12 And so we had three flights in one day.
1277. 00:54:16 I'm reading this book on the plane.
1278. 00:54:18 And it occurred to me that whenever it's time
1279. 00:54:21 to board the plane, they pre-board people
1280. 00:54:24 who need a little bit of extra time.
1281. 00:54:26 And I'm like, this is the version of putting Herbie
1282. 00:54:28 at the front for the airline industry.
1283. 00:54:31 Exactly, exactly, right?
1284. 00:54:34 Yeah, 100%, 100%.
1285. 00:54:36 Okay, so we got another round of movie magic here.
1286. 00:54:39 We're still not into the last section yet.
1287. 00:54:40 I told you all at the beginning of the show
1288. 00:54:41 that we're gonna have this whole narrative
1289. 00:54:44 and then we're gonna kind of get to the point
1290. 00:54:45 where he drives home these principles.
1291. 00:54:48 He goes into this meeting.
1292. 00:54:50 They look at the numbers.
1293. 00:54:51 And from the traditional accounting system,
1294. 00:54:53 it looks like the plant has a higher cost per part
1295. 00:54:58 or has a higher cost per product.
1296. 00:55:01 But what they realize is that the accounting actually
1297. 00:55:04 is masking the fact that their throughput is higher,
1298. 00:55:08 they're selling more.
1299. 00:55:10 It's just the numbers are reading in a way
1300. 00:55:13 that makes it look worse.
1301. 00:55:16 But it's actually not worse because
1302. 00:55:18 the goal is making money in throughput.
1303. 00:55:21 The goal is not to make the cost per part look
1304. 00:55:24 as low as possible.
1305. 00:55:25 So you get this idea.
1306. 00:55:26 Anyhow, here's the movie magic part.
1307. 00:55:28 The movie magic part is Bill Peach comes in and says,
1308. 00:55:30 hey, I'm getting a promotion.
1309. 00:55:33 Alex, I want you to be my job.
1310. 00:55:35 I want you to take my promotion.
1311. 00:55:37 So like he goes from like the beginning of the book,
1312. 00:55:39 lowest to low.
1313. 00:55:41 He doesn't know if he's gonna have a job in three months
1314. 00:55:43 to now he's getting promoted, right?
1315. 00:55:45 And like, it just feels--
1316. 00:55:47 - Well, there is actually a section in there
1317. 00:55:49 where Bill Peach's second in command, the Hilton guy.
1318. 00:55:55 He's the one who's anchored in these old,
1319. 00:55:57 I'll say old accounting measures.
1320. 00:56:00 And this is the part, honestly, that was a little bit,
1321. 00:56:03 I couldn't quite wrap my head around this.
1322. 00:56:06 I really struggle to picture a scenario
1323. 00:56:11 and I don't have any industrial experience here
1324. 00:56:13 where there are like these firmly established best practices
1325. 00:56:16 and this is exactly how we measure this stuff.
1326. 00:56:20 But I have been a part of other companies
1327. 00:56:24 in other industries where there are best practices.
1328. 00:56:26 And I feel like I'm trying to picture these conversations
1329. 00:56:33 pad around accounting and numbers and reporting.
1330. 00:56:37 And I feel like you walk in there and be like,
1331. 00:56:38 what's the actual goal of the company?
1332. 00:56:41 It's to make money.
1333. 00:56:42 That doesn't seem as revolutionary
1334. 00:56:44 as it did in this narrative.
1335. 00:56:48 And I feel like all of the numbers
1336. 00:56:50 from all of the reporting that I've ever seen,
1337. 00:56:53 it's basically you're picking what you're optimizing for.
1338. 00:56:58 And yes, there are credits and debits and I understand.
1339. 00:57:01 Like again, best practices on way to measure this stuff.
1340. 00:57:03 And maybe it's just I'm not anchored in this world
1341. 00:57:05 where like this is the way we've done it for 50 years
1342. 00:57:08 and we're not gonna do it any other way.
1343. 00:57:10 But I feel like all of the places that I've been
1344. 00:57:12 if you had conversations about like,
1345. 00:57:13 well, this is the story that these numbers are telling us,
1346. 00:57:16 but there's an alternate story with the numbers
1347. 00:57:18 that these numbers are telling us,
1348. 00:57:21 you would at least be able to have a conversation about that.
1349. 00:57:24 You wouldn't get the sort of reaction
1350. 00:57:27 that Hilton had here.
1351. 00:57:30 And it's like, well, no, you gotta optimize this number,
1352. 00:57:32 otherwise I'm taking your job.
1353. 00:57:34 That's hard for me to wrap my head around.
1354. 00:57:36 It probably exists.
1355. 00:57:37 Remember what Hilton's role was.
1356. 00:57:39 But remember what Hilton's role was?
1357. 00:57:40 Hilton was the division level productivity manager.
1358. 00:57:44 So all he cared, his little fiefdom was how productive
1359. 00:57:49 is the entire or the different work centers of the thing.
1360. 00:57:52 He doesn't really care.
1361. 00:57:54 Like, so somebody's evaluating him
1362. 00:57:56 based on productivity numbers and efficiency numbers,
1363. 00:57:59 not based on how much money he makes for the company.
1364. 00:58:03 And like, that is where like, you know,
1365. 00:58:05 it's the principle of measure what matters.
1366. 00:58:07 Well, to Hilton, what matters is that his numbers
1367. 00:58:11 are really good and what Bill's trying to come across
1368. 00:58:14 and say, yeah, but you could have really good numbers
1369. 00:58:16 and we were gonna go out of business.
1370. 00:58:18 And like, what are we supposed to do about that?
1371. 00:58:20 So it's like, I think this rationalizes with me
1372. 00:58:24 very, very well.
1373. 00:58:25 Like, we measure the wrong thing.
1374. 00:58:27 And Mike, like, I can tell you a story later
1375. 00:58:30 about, I can't tell it on the show,
1376. 00:58:33 but I can tell you a story later where 100%
1377. 00:58:36 measuring the wrong thing and it's dramatically impacting
1378. 00:58:40 the culture of the organization,
1379. 00:58:42 dramatically impacting the culture of the organization.
1380. 00:58:45 Sure, I, yeah, I guess I can picture that.
1381. 00:58:52 I don't think I would ever last more than a couple of weeks
1382. 00:58:55 in that environment myself, so.
1383. 00:58:59 - Okay, all right, so now the whole kind of
1384. 00:59:02 tenor of the book changes because Alex is gonna be,
1385. 00:59:06 now the division manager, he's gonna get ready
1386. 00:59:08 to move into this role and he goes into this like world
1387. 00:59:11 where he's like, okay, what did we just do?
1388. 00:59:15 What are the like, takeaways from this?
1389. 00:59:17 How do I reproduce this at the division level?
1390. 00:59:21 So it gets like, super meta now.
1391. 00:59:24 And essentially like the narrative of the book is,
1392. 00:59:27 what is it, Bob, Stacey, Lou and Alex in a conference room
1393. 00:59:34 and they basically just spend the rest of the book
1394. 00:59:36 in the conference room trying to like figure out
1395. 00:59:38 like what are the meta level principles
1396. 00:59:40 that they've just established?
1397. 00:59:42 Which the meta level principles,
1398. 00:59:44 like just to summarize them.
1399. 00:59:46 Oh, basically Jonah, they know they can't keep going
1400. 00:59:49 to Jonah, like that's gotta stop at some point.
1401. 00:59:52 So they've gotta figure this out on their own.
1402. 00:59:54 Meta level principles come into these five focusing steps.
1403. 00:59:57 Okay, so the five focusing steps are another one.
1404. 01:00:00 I talked about the drum buffer rope.
1405. 01:00:01 Well, these five focusing steps are another one
1406. 01:00:03 he wants to get across, the gold right wants to get across.
1407. 01:00:06 Identify the system's constraint.
1408. 01:00:07 So we've now taken bottleneck and we call it constraint.
1409. 01:00:10 And this is where theory of constraints comes from.
1410. 01:00:13 Okay, so we now have identified the system's constraint.
1411. 01:00:16 Decide how to exploit it.
1412. 01:00:17 So essentially, how do I make that constraint less
1413. 01:00:20 or how do I help that constraint?
1414. 01:00:23 Then subordinate everything else to that decision.
1415. 01:00:25 So this is like the priority system and, you know,
1416. 01:00:28 like all of that, like they're basically getting
1417. 01:00:32 to the high level principle that they just described
1418. 01:00:34 in the first 36 chapters or 35 chapters.
1419. 01:00:38 Elevate the constraint.
1420. 01:00:40 Okay, so now we elevate the constraint.
1421. 01:00:42 I, for life of me, don't remember exactly what that one is.
1422. 01:00:46 And then if a constraint is broken,
1423. 01:00:48 go back to step one.
1424. 01:00:49 Don't let inertia become the constraint.
1425. 01:00:52 So don't let the way we've always done things
1426. 01:00:53 become the constraint.
1427. 01:00:54 And these are the five focusing principles
1428. 01:00:56 to do this again and again and again in any setting,
1429. 01:01:01 not just with the NCX10 and the heat treat and all this stuff.
1430. 01:01:04 And that's like a big driver in these last four chapters
1431. 01:01:07 or these last five chapters is they get to that
1432. 01:01:10 on the whiteboard and they feel all proud of themselves
1433. 01:01:13 and they're all jazzed about their takeaways.
1434. 01:01:17 - Which I don't really understand that.
1435. 01:01:19 Like I saw, this is obviously the big takeaway, right?
1436. 01:01:23 They're at the whiteboard, they're having the conversations
1437. 01:01:25 and oh, ah-ha, you know, we got these five steps
1438. 01:01:29 and then they revise them so they're not bottlenecks,
1439. 01:01:32 they're constraints.
1440. 01:01:34 It feels weird to me.
1441. 01:01:36 Like step one identified systems constraints makes sense.
1442. 01:01:38 Decide how to exploit those constraints makes sense.
1443. 01:01:41 Subordinate everything else to the above decision.
1444. 01:01:45 Maybe, like that part's a little bit weird.
1445. 01:01:47 So what this would be is the easier example of this is Herbie.
1446. 01:01:51 When you subordinate everything else to the decision,
1447. 01:01:52 you put Herbie at the front.
1448. 01:01:54 - Yep.
1449. 01:01:55 - So now Herbie's gotta be at the front because
1450. 01:01:56 it doesn't matter if everybody else can go faster.
1451. 01:01:59 Herbie is the one who sets the throughput
1452. 01:02:01 or the flow of the thing.
1453. 01:02:02 So there you go, you got that one.
1454. 01:02:04 Now elevate the--
1455. 01:02:05 - Yeah, and then elevate the system's constraints.
1456. 01:02:07 I feel like this is sort of like prioritize those.
1457. 01:02:10 And then if in a previous step a constraint has been broken,
1458. 01:02:12 go back to step one.
1459. 01:02:13 Like that makes sense until the statement
1460. 01:02:17 that the real constraints are the policies.
1461. 01:02:20 Because now it's a little bit harder to measure.
1462. 01:02:23 - Yeah.
1463. 01:02:25 - Like yeah.
1464. 01:02:26 How do you apply this to a company handbook
1465. 01:02:31 when every department is optimizing for something different?
1466. 01:02:37 - I'm trying to apply this to the digital age.
1467. 01:02:39 I don't think it's as simple as what's productivity
1468. 01:02:42 make more money.
1469. 01:02:44 Maybe it is, you know, but--
1470. 01:02:47 - Did you say productivity on purpose
1471. 01:02:49 or did you mean what's the goal?
1472. 01:02:51 - Well, going back to the very beginning,
1473. 01:02:53 they talk about productivity is making money.
1474. 01:02:56 So that I did use productivity intentionally,
1475. 01:03:00 but that basically is the goal.
1476. 01:03:01 - Yes, it's the goal.
1477. 01:03:02 - 'Cause that's the big question that's in it.
1478. 01:03:03 What's the goal of the business, like to make money?
1479. 01:03:06 And that is the goal of any business, right?
1480. 01:03:08 But I don't know, the real constraints
1481. 01:03:12 being the policies almost feels like
1482. 01:03:16 this is leading into a whole nother discussion
1483. 01:03:19 kind of like Sam Carpenter work the system SOPs.
1484. 01:03:24 - And I--
1485. 01:03:25 - That is totally different than industrial manufacturing
1486. 01:03:28 narrative for 400 pages that we've just done.
1487. 01:03:30 - But I think what you just described
1488. 01:03:31 is exactly what he's moving towards, right?
1489. 01:03:33 'Cause he's moving towards management decisions
1490. 01:03:37 and the policies that you've established.
1491. 01:03:40 So accounting for the way we do efficiencies
1492. 01:03:43 or the way we calculate cost per part
1493. 01:03:47 and like the metrics that we matter,
1494. 01:03:49 the policies around the metrics that we measure,
1495. 01:03:51 not matter, but the policies around the metrics that we measure
1496. 01:03:54 are what caused the major constraint
1497. 01:03:57 and we need to address those.
1498. 01:03:59 So I think you're absolutely right.
1499. 01:04:00 I think what you described is what he's doing completely.
1500. 01:04:04 - Okay, but then like, where do we go from there?
1501. 01:04:08 - We go to the change, the change things
1502. 01:04:11 that he has in chapter 40.
1503. 01:04:15 Maybe, okay, so let's go there.
1504. 01:04:17 You explained this part to me.
1505. 01:04:18 - All right, so the change in chapter 40.
1506. 01:04:20 So he and Lou finally figure out
1507. 01:04:23 the highest, highest, highest, most meta-level thing
1508. 01:04:26 that he needs to do as the division manager.
1509. 01:04:29 And that highest level thing is he needs to figure out
1510. 01:04:31 what to change, what to change it to
1511. 01:04:34 and how to cause the change.
1512. 01:04:36 Because he's moved now from operations level,
1513. 01:04:39 which were the five focusing steps,
1514. 01:04:41 to now he's moved up to, okay, I'm at like the more meta-level.
1515. 01:04:46 Like what do we need to change, what do we need to change it to?
1516. 01:04:49 And then how do we do the change?
1517. 01:04:50 And that is where he's trying to get to
1518. 01:04:54 in the overall point of the book
1519. 01:04:56 is he's trying to get to like, hey, managers,
1520. 01:04:59 you have to do this process
1521. 01:05:01 when you combine it with the Socratic method,
1522. 01:05:02 which we haven't talked about yet.
1523. 01:05:04 When you combine it with the Socratic method,
1524. 01:05:07 that's the goal of management.
1525. 01:05:09 That's the goal of business management.
1526. 01:05:11 - Sure, so I actually like these three questions a lot.
1527. 01:05:14 I feel like this is very broadly applicable,
1528. 01:05:17 but also what to change, what to change it to,
1529. 01:05:20 how to cause a change.
1530. 01:05:21 That's kind of like purposely vague
1531. 01:05:23 and you can fill in the blank for that.
1532. 01:05:25 It's almost like my personal retreat questions,
1533. 01:05:27 which I start doing, which I stop doing,
1534. 01:05:29 which I keep doing. - Yep.
1535. 01:05:30 - And the magic of them is that you can fill them out
1536. 01:05:32 any way you want and whatever it is is right.
1537. 01:05:36 It feels so different than everything
1538. 01:05:41 that he tells in the narrative though.
1539. 01:05:43 So this part feels very fuzzy at the end to me.
1540. 01:05:49 And I don't like that.
1541. 01:05:51 I mean, he's in the crucible at the beginning.
1542. 01:05:57 He's got to figure out how to keep this plant open.
1543. 01:06:02 And there are very specific measurements of success
1544. 01:06:05 in terms of keeping the plant open.
1545. 01:06:08 And then he gets real fuzzy here at the end
1546. 01:06:11 and I got to figure out how to communicate this stuff
1547. 01:06:14 to the other people and the other plants
1548. 01:06:17 in a way that they have ownership over this
1549. 01:06:19 because I can't just walk in and be like,
1550. 01:06:21 do this, this, this specific things that we did at his plant
1551. 01:06:27 and this is the part where like every productivity book
1552. 01:06:31 we read for Bookworm, there's always like the epilogue
1553. 01:06:35 or, you know, here's how you apply this to your life.
1554. 01:06:39 And I feel like he's just kind of like,
1555. 01:06:41 hey, here's some general stuff.
1556. 01:06:42 You can figure it out.
1557. 01:06:43 - All right, let me change your perspective on this.
1558. 01:06:46 So let me try to change your perspective.
1559. 01:06:47 - Okay, do it.
1560. 01:06:49 - This book, Mike, is the hero's journey.
1561. 01:06:53 - Okay. - Okay.
1562. 01:06:54 - We start off and we have the negative event, right?
1563. 01:06:58 And then the hero goes through this epic long process
1564. 01:07:02 to figure out and when we get to the end,
1565. 01:07:04 there's enlightenment and the enlightenment at the end
1566. 01:07:08 isn't the five focusing steps.
1567. 01:07:10 The five focusing steps were the way you solved
1568. 01:07:13 the manufacturing type of a problem.
1569. 01:07:16 But the enlightened step is really,
1570. 01:07:21 it's about these three things that I need to do as a manager.
1571. 01:07:26 Right, as I've reached the peak,
1572. 01:07:28 I need to do these three things.
1573. 01:07:30 And if I do the three things with the Socratic method,
1574. 01:07:34 where I ask questions and I dig in deeper
1575. 01:07:37 and I do all that stuff, I can solve any problem.
1576. 01:07:41 Manufacturing, HR, facilities, policies, all that stuff.
1577. 01:07:47 I think he's trying to do the hero's journey on this
1578. 01:07:51 and that's the peak pinnacle of it.
1579. 01:07:54 - Well, that would be effective if there was actually
1580. 01:07:57 an example of how these things worked
1581. 01:08:01 in all of the other areas except his specific plant.
1582. 01:08:05 - Okay, but come on.
1583. 01:08:06 Like, would you want the book to be 1,000 pages?
1584. 01:08:08 Like, come on, I mean, I think you could wrap up
1585. 01:08:12 some of the marriage family stuff.
1586. 01:08:14 Like, there's no example of what he changed here
1587. 01:08:18 other than his wife started reading Socrates.
1588. 01:08:21 - No, like, didn't they determine that the goal
1589. 01:08:23 was like time or something like that?
1590. 01:08:24 Or the goal of the marriage?
1591. 01:08:26 - Yeah, they figured out what the goal of their marriage was
1592. 01:08:28 and because they figured out,
1593. 01:08:31 hold on, let's stop, run with me here
1594. 01:08:34 because they figured out what to change,
1595. 01:08:36 then they figured out what to change it to
1596. 01:08:39 and then they figured out how to cause the change
1597. 01:08:41 in the marriage.
1598. 01:08:44 That is the whole point of the marriage part
1599. 01:08:47 is because he wants to get to the very end
1600. 01:08:50 and he wants us to see that they did the exact same thing
1601. 01:08:54 in the marriage that he was telling
1602. 01:08:55 and how did they do it?
1603. 01:08:57 They asked a bunch of questions.
1604. 01:08:58 They started dating again.
1605. 01:08:59 They started exploring all this stuff.
1606. 01:09:01 They used the Socratic method to figure out the goal
1607. 01:09:04 of their marriage and to fix the marriage.
1608. 01:09:09 - I hate that you're right.
1609. 01:09:11 (laughing)
1610. 01:09:13 - I mean, it's like, it's the reason this book
1611. 01:09:18 has sold 10 million copies and has been around
1612. 01:09:20 for 40 years and people still talk about it
1613. 01:09:22 is because as annoying as it is at times
1614. 01:09:25 and as like overly like, I don't know, cheesy
1615. 01:09:29 or whatever you want to call it, it is,
1616. 01:09:31 he actually doesn't do a terrible job.
1617. 01:09:34 Like, I mean, he kind of rounds it out pretty well.
1618. 01:09:38 - Kinda, I feel like when it comes to the plant production
1619. 01:09:43 itself, there's so much conversation around that.
1620. 01:09:46 So many people involved in the story that are part
1621. 01:09:48 of that plant that that feels much more satisfying
1622. 01:09:52 in terms of the resolution than any of the other stuff.
1623. 01:09:55 - I agree.
1624. 01:09:55 - His new job, his marriage, like,
1625. 01:09:57 I got done with chapter 40 and I was like, that's it?
1626. 01:10:00 There's like 10 more chapters here.
1627. 01:10:02 (laughing)
1628. 01:10:03 - And I didn't look into his other writings
1629. 01:10:05 and I didn't look into like anything else that he's done.
1630. 01:10:07 But like, we talked about the fact
1631. 01:10:09 that there's this beyond the goal
1632. 01:10:11 and there's this article about a touch engineering.
1633. 01:10:12 I think if you got rid of that
1634. 01:10:14 and you replaced it into a broader conversation
1635. 01:10:18 about the end of this stuff,
1636. 01:10:19 Socratic method and then the change process
1637. 01:10:23 and like, thinking through that,
1638. 01:10:24 I think it's a more valuable ending to the book
1639. 01:10:27 than recapping everything that we talked about in the book
1640. 01:10:30 through Hitachi engineering and Ono
1641. 01:10:32 and Toyota production and those kind of things.
1642. 01:10:35 Because that's what they do in the goal
1643. 01:10:37 is they revisit everything they've talked about in the book.
1644. 01:10:40 I think you could have done that much more effectively
1645. 01:10:43 with change management type stuff.
1646. 01:10:46 - A hundred percent, you know, I love,
1647. 01:10:48 they talk about Kanban in that last section,
1648. 01:10:50 which I mean, I love that idea.
1649. 01:10:53 I'm familiar with the Toyota way
1650. 01:10:56 and the Justin Time production.
1651. 01:10:58 Like, I love all those topics.
1652. 01:10:59 I hated that last section of the book.
1653. 01:11:02 - What, it was so dry.
1654. 01:11:03 - And I'm used to reading that kind of stuff.
1655. 01:11:05 Like, that's like 99% of the stuff that I read for work.
1656. 01:11:10 So I was just like, oh yeah, this is another paper
1657. 01:11:12 that I used to reading, you know.
1658. 01:11:13 Like, so that didn't hit me nearly as bad
1659. 01:11:16 as it probably hit you.
1660. 01:11:18 - Okay.
1661. 01:11:19 - Yeah.
1662. 01:11:20 All right, so at this point, Mike, I'm good.
1663. 01:11:23 Like, I don't need to go any further in the book.
1664. 01:11:25 I think we've done a great job.
1665. 01:11:27 We've hit Drum Buffer Rope,
1666. 01:11:29 we've hit Five Focusing Steps,
1667. 01:11:30 Socratic Method, we've hit Change.
1668. 01:11:31 We talked about Alex and his marriage.
1669. 01:11:34 I'm feeling good about moving on to action items.
1670. 01:11:37 - Yeah, let's do it.
1671. 01:11:38 - Okay.
1672. 01:11:39 - You wanna take over now?
1673. 01:11:40 - Sure, I get to go over.
1674. 01:11:42 - Okay.
1675. 01:11:43 - So action items, I don't have any.
1676. 01:11:45 (laughs)
1677. 01:11:47 I'm not sure that there are action items
1678. 01:11:48 that you could take from this book, to be honest.
1679. 01:11:51 It's so narrative driven.
1680. 01:11:54 - Hurting my heart.
1681. 01:11:56 - Okay, well, I guess I'll leave it to you then.
1682. 01:11:59 But yeah, I don't have any action items.
1683. 01:12:04 And I will say, I think that is consistent
1684. 01:12:06 with all of the other Patrick Lencioni narrative style
1685. 01:12:10 books like this that I have read as well.
1686. 01:12:11 It's like, oh, death by meeting.
1687. 01:12:14 Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff in there
1688. 01:12:15 on like how to improve meetings,
1689. 01:12:17 but I don't have a specific action item associated with that.
1690. 01:12:21 I'm just gonna try to sprinkle this stuff in my role
1691. 01:12:23 as an integrator 'cause I'm in charge of some meetings
1692. 01:12:25 and maybe we can make our meetings suck less.
1693. 01:12:27 Like that's basically the approach to most of this stuff.
1694. 01:12:32 What do you got?
1695. 01:12:33 - I mean, mine is, it's general, but it's needed right now.
1696. 01:12:38 So I think about, particularly in my work life,
1697. 01:12:42 and I'm gonna think about like, what do I need to change?
1698. 01:12:45 What do I need to change it to?
1699. 01:12:47 And then how do you cause the change?
1700. 01:12:49 And I've already done thinking, right?
1701. 01:12:52 So if you wanna give me credit for an action item early,
1702. 01:12:55 I'll take it.
1703. 01:12:56 I've already done thinking on like the five focus steps.
1704. 01:12:59 And there, because we're not a manufacturing plant,
1705. 01:13:03 like you can still think of us in an industrial way, right?
1706. 01:13:06 We get students in, we do value added processes
1707. 01:13:10 while they're in college, and then they go out
1708. 01:13:12 and they leave more valuable, and like they are the product
1709. 01:13:15 that then goes on to industry, right?
1710. 01:13:17 And the throughput is how long does it take them to get through?
1711. 01:13:21 And then we restrain them in certain ways
1712. 01:13:23 with prereqs and all that stuff.
1713. 01:13:25 So it applies in the same way.
1714. 01:13:28 But it breaks down in certain ways.
1715. 01:13:31 Like there are certain things that like,
1716. 01:13:33 the time scale is so much longer on,
1717. 01:13:36 and then there are certain,
1718. 01:13:38 like when I think about metrics and efficiencies,
1719. 01:13:41 and especially being at like a Christian institution,
1720. 01:13:44 where like we do more like personal and character development
1721. 01:13:47 than like I got at Penn State.
1722. 01:13:49 You know, like I mean, it's just the nature
1723. 01:13:50 of the way we run our programs.
1724. 01:13:53 So it's like things break down in different ways.
1725. 01:13:55 So the five focusing steps aren't as easily easy for me
1726. 01:13:59 to wrap my head around in like my day job.
1727. 01:14:01 But these, what do I change?
1728. 01:14:04 What do I change it to?
1729. 01:14:05 And then how do I cause the change?
1730. 01:14:06 And like asking questions,
1731. 01:14:08 those are very, very valuable for me.
1732. 01:14:11 And I can already tell you like just saying it out loud,
1733. 01:14:15 like I've already thought of like four or five different things
1734. 01:14:17 about like, well, what do we need to change?
1735. 01:14:19 Oh, okay, there's this, this, this, and this, and this.
1736. 01:14:21 And then I just need to unpack the,
1737. 01:14:23 what do we change it to?
1738. 01:14:24 And then how do we cause the change?
1739. 01:14:25 And the hardest part, I can tell you right now,
1740. 01:14:27 hardest part is how do we cause the change?
1741. 01:14:29 Because inertia is so huge at a university.
1742. 01:14:32 It is so, so, so huge at a university, so.
1743. 01:14:36 - Yep, I can definitely see that.
1744. 01:14:39 And I do like those three questions.
1745. 01:14:42 I don't have a specific place where I would apply them.
1746. 01:14:45 But you're right, that is an obvious place
1747. 01:14:46 that people are looking for their own action items
1748. 01:14:48 from this, ask those questions.
1749. 01:14:51 I do agree that that's a, that would be a valuable process.
1750. 01:14:56 - Okay, so style and rating.
1751. 01:14:59 My book technically, so I'll go first.
1752. 01:15:06 I actually, as much as I nitpicked a lot of this stuff
1753. 01:15:09 in this book, I did actually enjoy it quite a bit.
1754. 01:15:12 I started reading it as I mentioned when we were traveling
1755. 01:15:15 and I think we were gone like four or five days.
1756. 01:15:19 By the time we came back, I was about 300 pages in.
1757. 01:15:23 It's a, it's a quick 400 page read.
1758. 01:15:27 - Yep, and it's such a thing exists.
1759. 01:15:29 - It's fairly entertaining too, right?
1760. 01:15:31 Like as you're reading about it,
1761. 01:15:32 I wonder what's going to happen next?
1762. 01:15:33 Like this is kind of cool.
1763. 01:15:34 I wonder what's going to happen next?
1764. 01:15:35 - Yep, yep.
1765. 01:15:37 I do feel a little bit disappointed by the way that it ends.
1766. 01:15:41 There's so many open loops at the end.
1767. 01:15:45 Like you mentioned, what does Jonah get paid?
1768. 01:15:48 Do, do they actually save their marriage?
1769. 01:15:51 Like do they move back in together?
1770. 01:15:53 What happens with their kids?
1771. 01:15:54 What happens in his new position?
1772. 01:15:56 Is he able to affect change across the organization?
1773. 01:16:03 I don't know, it's almost like there should be a part two,
1774. 01:16:06 but also I don't want there to be a part two.
1775. 01:16:08 Like I get what you're trying to tell me in this one.
1776. 01:16:13 Yeah, in terms of the actual business application stuff
1777. 01:16:17 that's in here, there's maybe 15 pages worth of stuff.
1778. 01:16:21 But I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing
1779. 01:16:24 that it's spread out over all these pages.
1780. 01:16:27 I think it's a narrative.
1781. 01:16:30 It's a story.
1782. 01:16:32 And maybe this is where Patrick Muncie only got the idea.
1783. 01:16:36 I don't know.
1784. 01:16:38 I do, I did like the whole story,
1785. 01:16:42 as long as it existed, I really liked.
1786. 01:16:44 Didn't care for the section at the end.
1787. 01:16:47 And having read it now, you were saying,
1788. 01:16:50 I get to read it again.
1789. 01:16:51 I do not want to read it again.
1790. 01:16:55 I do have, someone mentioned in the chat,
1791. 01:16:58 there is an animated business graphic novel version of this,
1792. 01:17:04 which I originally had as a gap book
1793. 01:17:06 and I didn't get a chance to go through that.
1794. 01:17:07 I will read that again.
1795. 01:17:10 I think it's worth reviewing maybe some of the concepts
1796. 01:17:12 from this, but I don't think I want to read the 360 pages again.
1797. 01:17:18 I having read this now, there's definitely stuff in here
1798. 01:17:22 that just, I didn't like,
1799. 01:17:26 already mentioned the whole marriage aspect of the story.
1800. 01:17:31 I don't know if it's because it's so old
1801. 01:17:33 and it hasn't been updated, but it just feels weird,
1802. 01:17:36 can't really relate to some parts of that.
1803. 01:17:40 I mean, some of that stuff, I've heard this in Life and Air.
1804. 01:17:43 I've heard this in the Patrick Muncie only stuff.
1805. 01:17:45 And some of it is just like the cheesiness comes with the territory.
1806. 01:17:48 If you're gonna go there, it's kind of weird anyways,
1807. 01:17:53 but this one in particular was really weird at times, yes.
1808. 01:17:58 Yeah, I was actually upset when his wife left him
1809. 01:18:04 because he went on the Boy Scout trip with his son.
1810. 01:18:07 Like, I think if Rachel and I were having problems
1811. 01:18:12 and we were in the position that they were in
1812. 01:18:15 and I am at the plant all the time,
1813. 01:18:17 but you know what, fine, I'll go on the Boy Scout thing,
1814. 01:18:20 she would be happy that I did that.
1815. 01:18:21 I know, yeah.
1816. 01:18:23 So that's weird, painting her to be very selfish, I guess,
1817. 01:18:29 and it just, it didn't sit, right?
1818. 01:18:32 But I think there's some good stuff in here
1819. 01:18:34 and I get why so many people that I've heard
1820. 01:18:38 who run their own business are like,
1821. 01:18:40 this book is phenomenal because the whole concept
1822. 01:18:43 of the bottlenecks is definitely worth understanding
1823. 01:18:47 and I do think that this book helped me think about it
1824. 01:18:50 in a little bit of a different way.
1825. 01:18:53 So it's sort of a great information packaged weirdly
1826. 01:18:58 and left me feeling a little bit strange when I got done,
1827. 01:19:03 but glad that I read it.
1828. 01:19:05 So I'm gonna give it four stars.
1829. 01:19:07 Nice.
1830. 01:19:08 For the most part, I really, really enjoyed it
1831. 01:19:11 and yeah, there's like some weird narrative stuff
1832. 01:19:13 but I feel like I'm able to pick through that.
1833. 01:19:16 I had no idea what we're gonna do when we actually recorded it.
1834. 01:19:19 I'm glad that you led this.
1835. 01:19:20 I feel like it was much better conversation
1836. 01:19:22 than if I tried to lead it.
1837. 01:19:24 But I do think it's more generally applicable
1838. 01:19:29 than it maybe sounded as we described it.
1839. 01:19:31 It's not just for people who are running factories
1840. 01:19:34 and operating CNC machines.
1841. 01:19:39 You probably do have to get a little bit creative
1842. 01:19:40 in terms of how you apply those principles
1843. 01:19:44 to your own business.
1844. 01:19:48 But I think there is something here for just about anybody
1845. 01:19:51 who does run their own business,
1846. 01:19:53 whether you're a solo-preneur or have a couple of employees
1847. 01:19:56 or are part of a big corporate structure
1848. 01:19:59 with a bunch of different plants and things like that.
1849. 01:20:01 So I get the hype now and I did like it,
1850. 01:20:06 but I'm sort of glad we're done.
1851. 01:20:09 Yeah, good. All right, I'm up.
1852. 01:20:13 Mike, this is a five-star book.
1853. 01:20:14 I mean, come on, like, I mean, there's no doubt about it.
1854. 01:20:17 It's easily a five-star book.
1855. 01:20:18 This is, I'm not gonna say it's the most five-star book
1856. 01:20:21 we've ever read, but this is a five-star book, okay?
1857. 01:20:24 Like I read it the second time, if not the third time.
1858. 01:20:27 I don't remember how many times I've read this book
1859. 01:20:29 at this point and I liked it just as much.
1860. 01:20:31 I still felt weird about the whole like marriage thing.
1861. 01:20:35 Right, like it just, it reads so weird at times.
1862. 01:20:38 Like it's just so strange and it catches you off guard.
1863. 01:20:42 You're like, wait, what, like, what just happened
1864. 01:20:44 in that whole thing?
1865. 01:20:46 But like the Herbie example and him like learning
1866. 01:20:49 through Herbie, the, like, I don't know.
1867. 01:20:54 Like it's just a good, good book
1868. 01:20:57 to teach some really nerdy principles
1869. 01:20:59 and I really like the way he does it.
1870. 01:21:02 Then, I mean, I'm biased because I like thinking
1871. 01:21:06 about this kind of stuff and I think about it all the time
1872. 01:21:09 so much that I teach it to other people.
1873. 01:21:12 So it's like, this is definitely right in my wheelhouse.
1874. 01:21:16 Martin in the chat said at one point,
1875. 01:21:19 this book could be about as third as long as it is
1876. 01:21:22 and it would still be as just as effective
1877. 01:21:24 and I can't tell you he's wrong.
1878. 01:21:27 Maybe a third is a little too aggressive.
1879. 01:21:29 I would probably go two thirds as long.
1880. 01:21:31 Like you could drop a decent portion of this out
1881. 01:21:33 and I think it would just be as effective.
1882. 01:21:35 So I'm with him on that.
1883. 01:21:38 But at the same time, this isn't one that I read
1884. 01:21:41 and I go, oh my gosh, will this book ever end?
1885. 01:21:45 Please finish this book.
1886. 01:21:46 Oh my gosh.
1887. 01:21:47 And it's like, so it doesn't reach that level
1888. 01:21:51 of I'm annoyed while I'm reading it.
1889. 01:21:53 But I do agree that, like, I mean, it could have been
1890. 01:21:54 tightened up.
1891. 01:21:55 Like the story could have been tightened up.
1892. 01:21:56 We could have not had some details in there.
1893. 01:21:59 You know, some reindo, like, just kind of trailing's off on.
1894. 01:22:03 You know, I don't know.
1895. 01:22:04 He's eating pizza at the top of the mountain, you know,
1896. 01:22:06 or whatever in the middle of the day.
1897. 01:22:07 Like, I mean, yeah, some of that was weird.
1898. 01:22:09 Yeah.
1899. 01:22:10 So it's like, there's just some weird stuff in there.
1900. 01:22:12 But at the same time, I mean, I just think
1901. 01:22:15 this is a really creative way to teach really technical,
1902. 01:22:22 like ideas and to introduce people into it.
1903. 01:22:25 And what I will say is like, you talked about
1904. 01:22:28 it being kind of like a niche book for people
1905. 01:22:32 in like the manufacturing space,
1906. 01:22:34 but also like having some broad applicability to it
1907. 01:22:37 that you wish you kind of would have done
1908. 01:22:38 a little more of the broad stuff.
1909. 01:22:41 I agree.
1910. 01:22:42 Like I think it would have been valuable to do that.
1911. 01:22:44 But I also think when he wrote this,
1912. 01:22:47 there were so many people where this was such a new
1913. 01:22:50 and novel idea in the manufacturing space.
1914. 01:22:54 And that's why it just took off.
1915. 01:22:55 Like it was just like, oh my gosh,
1916. 01:22:57 like we've not thought about this stuff.
1917. 01:22:59 And it was almost like you bring them in
1918. 01:23:01 in the language that they know,
1919. 01:23:03 which is production and manufacturing and efficiencies
1920. 01:23:06 and trying to make money.
1921. 01:23:08 Cause so many people are dealing with that in the industry.
1922. 01:23:11 And then you kind of like do the reveal at the end
1923. 01:23:15 and you go, well, wait a minute,
1924. 01:23:16 what if you like addressed other problems
1925. 01:23:19 with this change in Socratic method?
1926. 01:23:23 Wouldn't we be even better there?
1927. 01:23:24 And then he got like the rest of the people
1928. 01:23:26 to like be like, whoa, like it's crazy.
1929. 01:23:28 So I like it.
1930. 01:23:31 It's five star book.
1931. 01:23:32 I agree with you that I don't wanna read it again
1932. 01:23:34 like this year, but like, I mean, couple of years,
1933. 01:23:38 I'm probably gonna be okay with reading it again.
1934. 01:23:40 Like I just like it.
1935. 01:23:41 I think it's a good book.
1936. 01:23:43 - So question for you.
1937. 01:23:44 If you wrote a book like this
1938. 01:23:47 and it was insanely successful,
1939. 01:23:51 would you come out with a second edition
1940. 01:23:54 at some point within 40 years?
1941. 01:23:57 - It just depends on my goals.
1942. 01:23:59 I mean, you know, like if I wanted to be like a Ryan Holiday
1943. 01:24:05 or a Cal Newport, yeah.
1944. 01:24:07 Like I would totally write a second edition
1945. 01:24:09 and I would extend the thing.
1946. 01:24:10 But if I did this because I had that itch
1947. 01:24:14 and like I had this idea and I wanted to like tell industry
1948. 01:24:18 about this idea and then my real passion
1949. 01:24:21 was solving problems in industry.
1950. 01:24:23 Because I mean, there is a whole consulting wing
1951. 01:24:27 that went through the roof around theory of constraints.
1952. 01:24:29 And based on his descriptions of Jonah
1953. 01:24:34 and essentially he is the Jonah character,
1954. 01:24:37 I think Goldrat liked solving problems in the real world
1955. 01:24:41 more than he liked writing books.
1956. 01:24:44 - Yep.
1957. 01:24:45 So I can see that.
1958. 01:24:47 I just feel like if it was me,
1959. 01:24:51 I would definitely come out with another edition.
1960. 01:24:54 - Yeah.
1961. 01:24:55 - I mean, kind of like what David Allen did
1962. 01:24:56 with getting things done
1963. 01:24:58 and there's probably lots of other examples.
1964. 01:25:00 But also if it's a narrative story like this,
1965. 01:25:04 it's probably harder to update that than it would be.
1966. 01:25:06 You know, here's the new version of getting things done
1967. 01:25:08 and I changed the description of the tools.
1968. 01:25:10 - Yeah.
1969. 01:25:11 - So, yeah.
1970. 01:25:13 - Blake said it depends on your goals,
1971. 01:25:15 if your goals to make money.
1972. 01:25:16 (laughing)
1973. 01:25:18 Am I gonna make more money consulting or writing a book?
1974. 01:25:20 Like, that's a very good point, Blake.
1975. 01:25:22 That's a very good point, sir.
1976. 01:25:24 - All right.
1977. 01:25:25 Well, let's put the goal on the shelf.
1978. 01:25:28 What is next, Corey?
1979. 01:25:30 - The next book is You Can Just Do Things by Kate Hall.
1980. 01:25:35 Now, one of the things I think is interesting
1981. 01:25:36 about this book, sorry, the whole full title
1982. 01:25:39 is how high agency people get what they want out of life.
1983. 01:25:44 So, what I think is really interesting
1984. 01:25:46 about this book is her background is wild.
1985. 01:25:51 Mike, did you catch her background, Kate Hall's background?
1986. 01:25:55 - I did not.
1987. 01:25:56 - No, I have this book, but I haven't looked at it
1988. 01:25:58 and now it is packed up in a box somewhere.
1989. 01:26:00 - Here's the description.
1990. 01:26:01 Left an elite legal career before making partner
1991. 01:26:06 to gamble for a living as a world's top ranked
1992. 01:26:10 female poker player, a drug, hold on, it gets better.
1993. 01:26:14 A drug addiction left her broke and brain damaged,
1994. 01:26:18 but a year after emerging from it,
1995. 01:26:19 she co-founded a biotech startup
1996. 01:26:21 that set a clinical trial speed record.
1997. 01:26:24 Like what, I mean, I have no idea what we're getting into
1998. 01:26:29 and if anybody can do things
1999. 01:26:32 and talk to me about doing things,
2000. 01:26:34 it's somebody who has had that background.
2001. 01:26:36 So, I'm interested in this book.
2002. 01:26:39 I think it's gonna be a really interesting read,
2003. 01:26:41 whether it's good or not to hold their story,
2004. 01:26:43 but I think it's gonna be a really interesting read
2005. 01:26:45 about just kind of not letting
2006. 01:26:51 kind of like artificial scenarios
2007. 01:26:54 stop us from doing things, right?
2008. 01:26:55 Like in just not letting fake walls
2009. 01:26:58 stop us from doing things.
2010. 01:26:58 So, I'm excited about this book,
2011. 01:27:00 but so the next one is you can just do things by Kate Hall.
2012. 01:27:05 - All right, and then after that,
2013. 01:27:08 we are going to read another Arthur Brooks book,
2014. 01:27:12 which I purchased months ago,
2015. 01:27:14 but you reminded me about that is the meaning of your life.
2016. 01:27:19 We enjoyed the last Arthur Brooks book that we covered.
2017. 01:27:23 So, I'm looking forward to this one,
2018. 01:27:26 but this is a little bit of a departure from the goal.
2019. 01:27:30 We're going back to the thinking
2020. 01:27:32 our big thoughts type of books.
2021. 01:27:34 - Yep, yep, sounds good.
2022. 01:27:37 - Got any gap books?
2023. 01:27:38 - No, we're in the second week of the semester,
2024. 01:27:41 next week will be the third week of the semester.
2025. 01:27:43 Nope, we're not doing gap books right now.
2026. 01:27:45 We're prepping classes and doing projects.
2027. 01:27:48 So, no gap books.
2028. 01:27:49 - All right, yeah, I don't either.
2029. 01:27:50 We're moving tomorrow.
2030. 01:27:52 All my gap books are boxed up somewhere.
2031. 01:27:54 Maybe I'll find one.
2032. 01:27:55 - All of your thousands of books are in a box,
2033. 01:27:58 in boxes somewhere.
2034. 01:27:59 - It's something like 3000 books.
2035. 01:28:01 It's kind of insane, but I sort of love it.
2036. 01:28:03 - Yes, it is kind of cool.
2037. 01:28:06 - All right, well, thank you for listening.
2038. 01:28:09 If you are a pro show member,
2039. 01:28:12 thank you specifically for helping us keep the lights on.
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2043. 01:28:23 Today we talked about the new office that I am designing
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2046. 01:28:33 There's also a boot leg,
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2053. 01:28:48 we would love to have you as a supporter.
2054. 01:28:51 Seven dollars a month, you can go to bookworm.fm/pro.
2055. 01:28:56 - And if you're reading along with us,
2056. 01:28:58 you can pick up You Can Just Do Things by Kate Hall.
2057. 01:29:00 And we'll talk to you next time.