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now? Go to a different school?" And he said, "Kathy, you'll have to find another goal." Six months later he said, "There's a book you have to read, we're passing it around at our office and everyone's
signing the back if they recommend it." That was my introduction to
The Goal. Within six months, I wrote a letter to Eli Goldratt that began, "Dear Dr. Goldratt, if you were to walk into the office of Frank Fuller, Ruckle Middle School's principal, on his desk you would find
a copy of The Goal.. . and thereby hangs a tale." I went on to say how I was using the ideas and concepts to run this project.
DW: Did you hear back from Eli?
KS: Within four days, with a copy of his newly revised book. And
then within about a week or so I heard from Bob Fox, who was presi-
dent of the Goldratt Institute at that time, and they offered to send me
to Jonah school on scholarship. So I went through the course. Later I
went through a facilitator program on how to become a trainer of
Jonah processes. And then I went back and taught a pilot course to
kids. By the end of the year my kids were using the thinking pro-
cesses, which they learned brilliantly. They were the most Socratic
learners and teachers of other kids that you ever saw. It was pretty
convincing evidence to me that this stuff works with kids, and it
launched me into the role I have now.
DW: Was it a course about TOC or a course that used TOC
methods to teach other content?
KS: It was a class on world cultures—basically a class on perspectives,
which of course this is so aligned with. We used methods derived
from TOC to advance the curriculum. Later I taught a critical think-
ing skills course that was pure TOC. In that course I was teaching
cause and effect as a skill. We used concepts like the conflict cloud to
analyze conflicts in real-life situations.
DW: What evidence do you have that the kids were absorbing
the concepts?
KS: Here's an example. One day I read to the students the section
about the hike from The Goal, and then I gave them an evaluation
sheet. I asked them, "How is this relevant to real life? What's the
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weakest link?" Stuff like that. It wasn't a test. I just wanted to know if they were getting it. That night I looked at their answers and I realized maybe half of them got it and half of them didn't. So I went back
the next day and I asked them again, "What determines the strength
of the chain?" I called on one boy—let's say his name was Mike-who
I knew was struggling. He was rambling on and on. He did not get it.
And I did not know what to ask Mike to get the answer out of him. So
then I looked at my other students. And I knew if I called on John, for
example, who did get it, he would just tell Mike the answer, and that's
not what I wanted. So I said, "No one can give Mike the answer. You
can ask Mike a question to help him think of the answer." And that is when one of my other students raised her hand. She said, "Remember when we were doing the cloud on teach fast, teach slow? The
problem of making sure everyone understands but the fast ones don't
get bored?" That's when I saw what was happening. As the other
students began asking Mike questions designed to draw the answer
out of him, I could see that everyone was engaged. It was a wonderful
example of cooperative learning. Because everyone had to think. Even
if they already knew the answer, they were thinking hard about how
to guide others to the answer.
DW: How do you introduce TOC to schools where it has never
been taught before?
KS: We usually start with teaching TOC as a generic process, then
figure out how to apply it to a specific curriculum. Initially it was
easier to get it in through the counseling element of the school-the
behavior application. That seemed to be the most obvious way in.
DW: How do counselors use TOC?
KS: Let's say the child is sent in to the guidance office with a behav-
ioral problem. The counselor who's been trained in TOC will use
tools like the negative and positive branch: "What did you do? Why
were you sent here?" And then they go into the cause and effect con-
sequences of the behavior, and how that leads to negatives for the
student. The student will say, "If I do this, I get in trouble, I get grounded, I get sent up here, my parents get called." It's almost predictable, this branch. Then the counselor asks, "Okay, what would
happen if you didn't do these things?" Then the student writes the
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other branch, the positive one. Then the counselor asks, "Okay, which would you prefer? It's up to you."
One of the first teachers that was using this in a classroom in Califor-
nia was working with at-risk students. They were at risk of failing
academically and behaviorally. She was teaching the process outright,
as a skill. And she had her students do cause and effect branches.
One boy did it on, "I'm going to steal a car, go on a joy ride." She went to help him, because he couldn't get the branch started. "She
said, "What's the problem?" He said, "This is the first time I've ever thought of something ahead of time." In the end he had to go to the
driver education teacher and get some information to finish the branch,
which is great. He found out what would happen to him if he got
caught, because he didn't really know. How do you quantify the re-
sults of something like that?
DW: You've since developed other applications?
KS: Yes, and they're interconnected. Because behavior changes atti-
tudes. Or maybe I should say that attitudes impact behavior. If a stu-
dent can make a more responsible decision, and he gets a favorable
impact, his attitude toward the teacher and what he's doing in school
changes. That's bound to have some impact on his learning. But ad-
ditionally, we have, in the past two years, really worked on how to
deliver the TOC learning process through curriculum content. Or,
again, maybe it's the other way around: How to teach content using
the TOC processes. Because teachers do not want to interrupt class to
teach a life skill. They have to teach the curriculum.
DW: I understand you've introduced TOC to young people in
prison settings.
KS: I went into a juvenile jail in California about five years ago. I
spoke to a new group of juvenile offenders, this was their first day.
They were all gang members. Later the teacher who invited me told
me he had been very worried because I was female and most of them
had been abused by their moms. He was afraid they would back me
into a corner and be quite rude. There I stood there in a polka dot
dress, from Niceville, Florida, looking like the person who had put
them in jail. I'm sure I didn't look very empathetic. But I tried to get
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them to tell me what they wanted out of life. They said things like.
"We just want to get out of here, lady." I said, "Do you think that's enough to keep you out of here?"
Finally, one boy said to me, "I just want a better life for my kids."
These were 16 to 19-year-old old black and Hispanic males. I looked
at this guy and I said, "I'm sorry I don't understand, what do you
mean? You have kids?" He said, "Yes, I have a two-year-old and a baby."
Anyway we had this goal on this rickety old chalkboard, "A better
life." I said, "Okay, what is preventing you from having a better life?"
They said, 'Jealous people." I turned around and I said again, "I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean by jealous." Because I'm
thinking to myself, and not facetiously, "who could be jealous of them, they're in jail?" And that's when they said, "Oh, but if you go back and try to get out of the gang they'll be jealous, they don't want you
to leave the gang, you can't leave," and all this.
They also mentioned prejudice as an obstacle. And as I'm making
this list I am thinking, "I am in over my head." There was nothing I could think of that would overcome the obstacles these kids were
facing. But I didn't need to worry about it. Because they had the
answer. They went down the list and they added more obstacles
like, "my past," and "criticism," and about halfway through they gave me something brilliant: "Me. Myself. I have to change myself. Right away."
I later received letters from some of those kids. One of them said,
"Before we had that talk, even making it to 21 was hard to see in my
future. But you gave me hope." Now I ask you, did I give him the
hope? No! It came from him! But he wrote, "You gave me hope that
I can make it if I just follow those steps." That last part is so important. This is not just wishful thinking. It's giving somebody a process
they can use, so that when the person who's giving them the attaboys
isn't there, they have the know-why, not just the know-how to keep
going.
DW: Does TOC have the same relevance to kids who don't
have such severe obstacles to overcome?
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Absolutely. What it helps people do is to make sense of things. Many
times, even in affluent communities, students are motivated only be-
cause their parents want them to achieve. But learning does not make
sense to them. It doesn't seem relevant. They're doing it only be-
cause they have all the right environmental factors. What could be
unleashed from those children if we could present information to them
in such a way that they could derive their own answers instead of
providing answers that were simply memorized? It's all about un-
leashing people's potential. I have felt many times as a teacher that
disruptive behavior comes from the high achievers as well as the low
achievers-because the high achievers are bored! In TOC we have a
way to differentiate instruction with one learning process. To bring
them all with you.
DW: What is your goal for TOC For Education?
KS: I see empowered learners, enabled learners, and the real joy of
lifelong discovery. All those platitudes that we aspire to, I see them
being practically achieved. As well as people being kinder to each
other. I see this as the real language of civility. Once I had to give a
presentation about TOC to a group of teachers. We put on a play
with some of my students. And afterwards the students were saying,
"Mrs. Suerken, what's going to happen? This is so effective, there
won't be any problems left." I thought, that will probably never hap-
pen! But that's the way they saw it. I wish you could come to our
conference in Serbia in May! We're going into Thailand this month
through an organization called the Girl's Brigade, like the Girl Scouts.
We have somebody in Singapore that's taking it into the sports coun-
cil, into sports applications. We're in Malaysia. My new director in
the United States, he's going to start a private school next fall and
he's writing all of the curriculum based on TOC. Really, I think we've
just touched the tip of the iceberg.
E.M. Goldratt
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
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390
For information about other books on the
Theory of Constraints (TOC)
please visit our web site at:
www.northriverpress.com
E.M. Goldratt
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
Captured by Plamen T.
Document Outline
Cover
Introduction
About the Author
Chapters Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
An Interview with Eli Goldratt and Others
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, Third Revised Edition Page 51
