Goldratt’s Rules of Flow is the most recent book under the banner of legendary operations research, however the actual ‘Rules’ are only presented as a list after the final chapter, after the conclusion on page 171. In this list – noted below and via a photograph of what would be page 173 – the rules are presented out of order in the way that they are presented in the book.
Avoid bad multitasking, control your WIP.
If you don’t want to get stuck, verify full-kit before you get going.
Triage to ensure you are working on the right priorities.
Ensure synchronization between your tasks / people / resources.
If you keep going back to the same projects and you don’t get the desired results, look into the option to increase the dosage.
Avoid unnecessary rework by finding what causes it.
Standardization is recommended when improvising is costly.
Abolish local optimum, global optimum is what matters.
These are all good rules, and are all in line with classic lessons from Deming in the realm of quality, and Covey from the world of self-improvement. From a writing standpoint, they could have been more integrated with the rest of the book and even used to advance the story. The protagonist, Marc Wilson, could have been pulling them together in his effort to save his father’s business, and then sharpened them through talking with Professor Rick Silver. Wilson could have assembled them with his co-workers, including his love interest, Abby, in the same way that Alex Rogo pulls together his five thinking steps in Chapter 37 of The Goal.
Watch a review of the entire book in sixty seconds.
Isaac Wilson is the founder and CEO of Wilson Engineered Solutions – two of his children work for him. Sam, his daughter, runs a production site for them in the South and Marc runs their engineering team which designs products that are later produced using Sam’s plant. Sam has a family and fulfilling life, Marc does not – his loneliness and single minded focus on work is disheartening.
Isaac has a terminal disease and is thinking about selling the business; he doesn’t tell his kids about the illness until the last chapter. The company’s projects are all late. Customers are angry. In the first chapter a long time customer fires them because of the constant delays.
In response to the potential sale of the business Marc makes the curious decision to get an executive MBA, where he studies in Professor Rick Silver’s class. Kiara is a classmate who works in IT for a financial services business. They learn all about how to improve project implementation using theory of constraints, Marc applies these changes to his business and they work, and he kisses his work crush – an employee named Abby – late in the book, just before Isaac gives him the business because of all the improvements he has made.
The Settings
Offices of the engineering team at Wilson Engineered Solutions.
The book kicks off Chapter 1 here at the corporate offices with a conversation between Marc and Isaac, where Isaac divulges that he may sell the business – but does not tell his key employee AND SON that he has a terminal disease. About a third of the book is set here, and it is an important part of the lessons taught about the rules of flow. It is here that Kyle resigns at the end of Chapter 2 and where Marc’s attraction to Abby is first revealed. The office hosts Marc and Abby’s team as they serve as a foil to the classroom education provided by Professor Richard Silver and the executive MBA course he teaches.
The Executive MBA classroom.
We meet Professor Richard Silver in Chapter 4 who plays a similar role as did Jonah in the original version of The Goal. The classroom is used for 10 of the book’s 27 chapters. Here Marc banters with the Professor and his classmates, including:
Kiara, who runs IT at a financial services firm. She has several team members attending the Executive MBA class with her.
Charlie, who is with a construction firm. Charlie’s classroom examples often point out the opposite style of projects than what Marc or Kiara may do.
The Wilson family.
Isaac is a lousy dad and boss, based on his hiding a terminal illness, but the family dynamic portrayed by author Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag is both stereotypical and authentic. Marc visits his sister, Sam, in the South where he bikes with his nephew. He sees his family on Thanksgiving. The book closes with Isaac finally revealing his illness at a family dinner.
Questions?
If I’ve read the original Goldratt’s The Goal – should I read this book?
Yes. However, I also try to re-read the book on a regular basis, as well as use it in training materials with teams. Reading Rules of Flow is much faster, and more contemporary. Certainly if you’re not in a manufacturing environment, this book is much more mapped to project management – a modernized version of Hanging Fire.
If I’ve not read either, which one should I read first?
Start with Rules of Flow – and this is different than the opinion I held when I first started, but the author won me over. It helps to have a more contemporary version, and the original was really oriented towards conventional manufacturing, then the literature around Theory of Constraints was adopted for other approaches like project management and software development. The narrative around rules of flow is tighter and has a tighter resolution – whereas everyone when recalling The Goal forgets that after Alex Rogo’s promotion there are 9 more chapters – almost 10% of the book. Chapter 27 of Rules of Flow neatly ties up Isaac telling his kids about his condition and handing the business over to Marc.
Marc Wilson, age 32, runs the engineering team for his father, Isaac at the business he created Wilson Advanced Solutions. In the first chapter they loose their biggest customer, Doolen, because their projects are too late, which leads Isaac to say he’s thinking of selling the business. Marc enrolls in an executive MBA program, where his Professor Richard Silver teaches a class on rules of flow. Marc visits his older sister, Sam, who runs the production team at a location in the South and has a successful family – Marc is single and lonely. In class Marc learns about triage and the harmful effects of multitasking.
Chapters 9 – 12 kick off with Marc Wilson working with his work-crush Abbie to change their approach to project management; telling the team the plan, iterating once they have feedback, and dealing with customer response to the changing methods. Chapters 13 – 18 introduce the concept of “Full Kit” which is a checklist of the necessary ingredients for a successful completion of the next stage of the project. Chapters 13, 16, and 19 are set in the executive MBA classroom of Rick Silver, who serves as the ‘Jonah’ of Rules of Flow. In Chapter 19, the topic of ‘synchronization’ is introduced.
Marc’s team improves their throughput by making the suggested changes about ‘triage’ and controlling WIP that were made in Chapters 1-8. Marc’s sister running the production site becomes frustrated with a deluge of completed projects, indicating that in the last part of the book we should find some Goldratt perspectives on improving the performance of the entire entity, not just Mark’s realm. This is similar to how Alex Rogo is promoted in Chapter 31 of The Goal and with that gets greater perspective. We learn that Isaac, Marc’s father, has an incurable disease that he has not told his kids about, and that he plans to sell the business to a private equity firm.
Part 3: Pages 117 – 171, Chapters 20 – 27, Pages 117 – 171: The End (link)
Chapter 20 starts at the Thanksgiving dinner table with Mark learning about synchronization from his mother, Laura, in a scenario that will become as popular as Herbie’s scout hike from the original The Goal. This is followed by another likely iconic setting during a bike ride in Chapter 23, where Marc learns about maintaining his energy while cycling with his nephew during a visit with his sister. Between these chapters we’re again in Professor Richard Silver’s executive MBA classroom, where we learn more ways to increase and maintain project flow, as well as the benefits of having high throughput for projects. When he thinks he has accidentally learned of his father’s plan to sell the business, Marc determines that he’ll need to quit – and this gives him the mental permission he needs to finally kiss his crush and employee, Abbie, in Chapter 25. There’s a nice resolution to the classroom setting in Chapter 26 – nicer than the tedious and repetitive introduction and mental debates about the theory of constraints that occupy so many of the chapters in the original The Goal after Alex Rogo’s promotion.
The story resolves quite nicely in Chapter 27; Marc and his sister are summoned to their parent’s house where Isaac hands the business over to Marc, compliments him for the changes he has created using the Theory of Constraints he’s learned in Professor Silver’s course, and let’s both of them know about his terminal disease.
Isaac Wilson’s company has just lost its biggest customer because their projects are always behind schedule and late. He tells his son, Marc, an MBA who runs the engineering and project management team, and also mentions that he may find a buyer for the business.
Marc meets with his top two project leaders to talk about changes they can make – the whole activity feels repetitive to him. One of the engineers, Kyle, resigns at the end of the meeting.
Marc goes to a bar, he is single and never pursued the MBA he wanted to get. He turns to alcohol rather than dealing with the real problems in his life.
In Marc’s MBA class, Professor Rick helps the students understand the negative impact of multi-tasking, how it causes delays on projects, and ways to unfreeze their flow of execution.
Marc visits with Abbie about cutting the WIP – freezing projects – in order to increase their throughput. Abbie observes that if they want to cut execution time in half, they should probably cut the WIP in half too. These observations are very similar to ones made in Chapter 28 of The Goal.
After deciding to move forward in Chapter 9, Marc and Abbie take their idea to the engineering project team – where they meet with some expected resistance. Nonetheless, they persevere.
Chapter 11 – “The Misconception About Starting Early” (Link)
Isaac, Marc’s father, hears from a customer that the company’s approach to projects is changing. He meets with Isaac to learn more, and respects his son’s decision to make a bold change. Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag uses a similar writing technique as her father did with Alex Rogo in Chapter 7 of The Goal – the primary character’s ability to retreat is removed, forcing them to try approaches that would otherwise be seen as reckless. Just as Rogo follows Jonah in The Goal to make big changes that are contrary to popular opinion, Marc follows Professor Richard Silver’s guidance on changing their approach to projects because otherwise the business will fail.
Chapter 12 – “Dynamics of Theories and Trends” (Link)
On a Friday evening a few weeks later, Abbie tells Marc that some of the team is idle and unhappy about it. Marc goes on a blind date with Tina. In some ways, the writing about Marc is as unsatisfying as the description of Julie in The Goal.
Marc is back in Rick Silver’s executive MBA classroom. Professor Silver introduces the concept of “full-kit” or thorough preparation via a written checklist and how to use a stage-gate type process to ensure full-kit before beginning a project. After the class Marc calls Abbie in excitement to let her know he’s got a solution for their woes, and is disappointed to find she is going out on a date.
Marc and Abbie roll out the ‘full-kit’ concept to their team. Marc shows Abbie his ‘WIP Board’ and learns that when he caught Abbie on the Saturday evening, her blind date had gone poorly. Abbie and Marc seem lonely, and the ‘will-they-won’t-they’ tension in the writing feels like the constant tension between Alex and Julie Rogo. I wonder if there will be a “You bastard!” misunderstanding scene like there was in Chapter 24 of The Goal.
The author puts the protagonist into a social setting to put the concepts into a different light. Marc lifts with his friend Tim, there are similarities between lifting and focusing on projects. Marc is no longer dating Tina, but hints that he would not date Abbie because she is a co-worker. At just two pages, this short chapter is stylistically similar to Chapter 7 from The Goal; Goldratt used several short chapters to advance the story.
Marc is back in Professor Rick Silver’s executive MBA course. Professor Richard Silver brings in two guests to talk about the concept of ‘dosage’ for projects, which is really the ‘batch size’ or ‘amount of work done’ for a project. One guest worked in aircraft maintenance and the other in corrections – the concept of dosage helped improve the flow of both of their processes. The concept of dosage here is similar to that of batch size that Goldratt originally focused on in Chapter 28.
The Full-kit concept, first introduced in Chapter 13 continues to be refined – just as Eliyahu Goldratt used Rogo’s experience in the plant to refine key concepts in The Goal. By having clear checklists and only kicking off projects that have the necessary ingredients for success, Marc sees his department is getting more done and the people appear to be happier. His sister, Sam, running the company’s plant is unhappy and calls to tell him so – because Marc’s team increased throughput is releasing more to her team than she is prepared to handle. Similar to the original Goal, where the constraint is perceived to be the robot, the NCX-10, it turns out that there are more constraints once the process is fully mapped. Marc reflects on their situation with Abbie and they note that these ‘gates’ are effective and worth implementing in more positions in their project management process.
We follow our protagonist to a new setting, his parent’s home. Marc has dinner with his parents, Laura and Isaac. A reminder that Isaac is the owner of the business – they apparently haven’t spoken in a month, which is not a good indicator for Isaac’s leadership capabilities. Isaac likes the results of the ‘Rules of Flow’ so far, but shoots down the idea of implementing a “Gate Zero” because he, “understands the customers better.” After Marc leaves, Laura says that his ideas were good, but Isaac rebuffs her as well and we learn that he has some disease that has not been disclosed to his son and that he is under letter of intent (“LOI”) with a private equity firm to sell the business.
It’s easy to put on another hat and see Isaac as a terrible boss and father who doesn’t listen to his son / employee while withholding critical information – his untreatable terminal illness and pending sale of the company. Write this story with that angle and it becomes a warning tale about narcissism and other dark triad activity.
Marc is back in his executive MBA course with Professor Richard Silver. The class discusses many topics, Marc observes that local optimization is a trap – in the same way that Jonah pointed out this issue to Alex Rogo in Chapter 8 of The Goal. The fact that rework is a waste of resources and an indicator of other problems is discussed. Rick introduces the concept of synchronization which is the homework assignment.
Chapter 20’s focus on the American holiday of Thanksgiving, which focuses on the preparation of a Turkey, can go down as a more famous Goldratt-ian metaphor than Herbie and his famous scout hike from The Goal (Chapter 13, Chapter 15). Executive MBA professor Rick Silver has asked his class to study synchronization – which is simply aligning the goals of the organization to the primary constraint. For US Thanksgiving – this is the preparation of the turkey, which takes the longest and utilizes the primary tool for cooking, the oven.
This is a clever chapter title as it reflects at least three ‘one-on-ones’!
Marc has a ‘one-on-one’ meeting with Linda, his top software project lead.
Linda brings up that she wants to go ‘one-on-one’ and focus all her time on the company’s software needs and Marc as a savvy leader agrees with her idea.
Lastly, Marc and Abbie wind up each at the same restaurant – recommended by the clever Linda – where they have dinner together – ‘one-on-one’.
Does that make this chapter a ‘three-on-one-on-one’?
Marc is back in the Executive MBA classroom of Professor Rick Silver who is teaching the Rules of Flow class. In Chapter 22 of Rules of Flow, Dr. Efrat brings in many of those topics and does so after outlining a topic – dependent events and statistical fluctuations – that drives variability in project execution and planning. Her father extended the topic and its impact to give it depth; her master stroke here is instead to bring the topic together to show its impact and drive home the importance of short communication loops and psychological safety when working on projects.
If there was an extended Goldratt universe, along the lines of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (“MCU“) then Rules of Flow has now added two new athletic activities – weight training in RoF 15 “Enough Weight, Enough Repetitions” and now a long day out cycling with Marc and his nephew Jack. Marc focuses on time as the constraint to their capacity to go riding, while his nephew gently reminds him that their power – a function of their training, nourishment, and energy – is also a constraint. They must meter their food and water, otherwise they won’t be able to complete the circuit they’ve chosen.
Marc attends Professor Rick Silver’s Executive MBA course on Rules of Flow. The class discusses how to allocate times to buffers – usually 1/3 is a good rule of thumb. They discuss the ‘fever’ chart to track project timeliness. Marc realizes that a lot of the minutiae he tracks from his team has now become busywork as he has cut the number of projects and increased the flow of WIP.
Chapter 25: “Lead Time is Getting Shorter” (Link) Pages 155 – 159
Big moves in the plot! Marc gets a call for “Mr. Wilson” and accepts it, but it was really a call to his father and now Marc knows that the business sale is about to close. What an accident? Or was it? Marc shares this message with Abbie in a distraught state, she consoles him and they kiss. It is sad how focused they are on their careers and how it prevents the development of their relationship.
Chapter 26: “How to Get Started” (Link), Pages 161 – 168
Marc attends his final executive MBA course on “Rules of Flow” taught by Rick Silver. They discuss four common scenarios on how to deal with project constraints. Lastly, Silver identifies that the ultimate constraint in an organization is leadership time and their ability to focus attention on the highest value opportunities.
Chapter 27: “The Contingency Plan” – END – (Link), Pages 169 – 171
In the final chapter, we resolve the open issues – and the dreadful waiting game unleashed at the close of Chapter 25 by Isaac on Marc, his son and most valued employee, is brought to a close. Isaac discloses the terminal disease, shared first in Chapter 18, to Marc, and his sister, Sam, who has flown in for the dinner. Marc will be given the company to run, Sam will get a share of ownership – but had conveniently signed away interest in running the business already. Isaac has admired the ‘new ways’ that Marc has brought to the business and been giving him space to run – although to the reader it looked like abandonment.
If you liked this review, check out the highlights from the original, Goldratt’s The Goal.
In the final chapter, Marc and his sister are summoned to their parent’s house where Isaac hands the business over to Marc, compliments him for the changes he has created using the Theory of Constraints he’s learned in Professor Silver’s course, and let’s both of them know about his terminal disease.
Before we get there, there are two iconic chapters:
Chapter 20 starts at the Thanksgiving dinner table with Mark learning about synchronization from his mother, Laura.
Chapter 23, Marc learns about maintaining his energy while cycling with his nephew during a visit with his sister.
Amidst all these chapters we’re again in Professor Richard Silver’s executive MBA classroom, where we learn more ways to increase and maintain project flow, as well as the benefits of having high throughput for projects. Very importantly, Marc kisses his love interest, and employee, Abby in Chapter 25 when he thinks she will no longer be working for him.
Chapter 20 starts at the Thanksgiving dinner table with Mark learning about synchronization from his mother, Laura, in a scenario that will become as popular as Herbie’s scout hike from the original The Goal. This is followed by another likely iconic setting during a bike ride in Chapter 23, where Marc learns about maintaining his energy while cycling with his nephew during a visit with his sister. Between these chapters we’re again in Professor Richard Silver’s executive MBA classroom, where we learn more ways to increase and maintain project flow, as well as the benefits of having high throughput for projects. When he thinks he has accidentally learned of his father’s plan to sell the business, Marc determines that he’ll need to quit – and this gives him the mental permission he needs to finally kiss his crush and employee, Abbie, in Chapter 25. There’s a nice resolution to the classroom setting in Chapter 26 – nicer than the tedious and repetitive introduction and mental debates about the theory of constraints that occupy so many of the chapters in the original The Goal after Alex Rogo’s promotion.
The story resolves quite nicely in Chapter 27; Marc and his sister are summoned to their parent’s house where Isaac hands the business over to Marc, compliments him for the changes he has created using the Theory of Constraints he’s learned in Professor Silver’s course, and let’s both of them know about his terminal disease.
Marc Wilson, age 32, runs the engineering team for his father, Isaac at the business he created Wilson Advanced Solutions. In the first chapter they loose their biggest customer, Doolen, because their projects are too late, which leads Isaac to say he’s thinking of selling the business. Marc enrolls in an executive MBA program, where his Professor Richard Silver teaches a class on rules of flow. Marc visits his older sister, Sam, who runs the production team at a location in the South and has a successful family – Marc is single and lonely. In class Marc learns about triage and the harmful effects of multitasking.
Chapters 9 – 12 kick off with Marc Wilson working with his work-crush Abbie to change their approach to project management; telling the team the plan, iterating once they have feedback, and dealing with customer response to the changing methods. Chapters 13 – 18 introduce the concept of “Full Kit” which is a checklist of the necessary ingredients for a successful completion of the next stage of the project. Chapters 13, 16, and 19 are set in the executive MBA classroom of Rick Silver, who serves as the ‘Jonah’ of Rules of Flow. In Chapter 19, the topic of ‘synchronization’ is introduced.
Marc’s team improves their throughput by making the suggested changes about ‘triage’ and controlling WIP that were made in Chapters 1-8. Marc’s sister running the production site becomes frustrated with a deluge of completed projects, indicating that in the last part of the book we should find some Goldratt perspectives on improving the performance of the entire entity, not just Mark’s realm. This is similar to how Alex Rogo is promoted in Chapter 31 of The Goal and with that gets greater perspective. We learn that Isaac, Marc’s father, has an incurable disease that he has not told his kids about, and that he plans to sell the business to a private equity firm.
Chapter 20’s focus on the American holiday of Thanksgiving, which focuses on the preparation of a Turkey, can go down as a more famous Goldratt-ian metaphor than Herbie and his famous scout hike from The Goal (Chapter 13, Chapter 15). Executive MBA professor Rick Silver has asked his class to study synchronization – which is simply aligning the goals of the organization to the primary constraint. For US Thanksgiving – this is the preparation of the turkey, which takes the longest and utilizes the primary tool for cooking, the oven.
This is a clever chapter title as it reflects at least three ‘one-on-ones’!
Marc has a ‘one-on-one’ meeting with Linda, his top software project lead.
Linda brings up that she wants to go ‘one-on-one’ and focus all her time on the company’s software needs and Marc as a savvy leader agrees with her idea.
Lastly, Marc and Abbie wind up each at the same restaurant – recommended by the clever Linda – where they have dinner together – ‘one-on-one’.
Does that make this chapter a ‘three-on-one-on-one’?
Marc is back in the Executive MBA classroom of Professor Rick Silver who is teaching the Rules of Flow class. In Chapter 22 of Rules of Flow, Dr. Efrat brings in many of those topics and does so after outlining a topic – dependent events and statistical fluctuations – that drives variability in project execution and planning. Her father extended the topic and its impact to give it depth; her master stroke here is instead to bring the topic together to show its impact and drive home the importance of short communication loops and psychological safety when working on projects.
If there was an extended Goldratt universe, along the lines of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (“MCU“) then Rules of Flow has now added two new athletic activities – weight training in RoF 15 “Enough Weight, Enough Repetitions” and now a long day out cycling with Marc and his nephew Jack. Marc focuses on time as the constraint to their capacity to go riding, while his nephew gently reminds him that their power – a function of their training, nourishment, and energy – is also a constraint. They must meter their food and water, otherwise they won’t be able to complete the circuit they’ve chosen.
Marc attends Professor Rick Silver’s Executive MBA course on Rules of Flow. The class discusses how to allocate times to buffers – usually 1/3 is a good rule of thumb. They discuss the ‘fever’ chart to track project timeliness. Marc realizes that a lot of the minutiae he tracks from his team has now become busywork as he has cut the number of projects and increased the flow of WIP.
Chapter 25: “Lead Time is Getting Shorter” (Link) Pages 155 – 159
Big moves in the plot! Marc gets a call for “Mr. Wilson” and accepts it, but it was really a call to his father and now Marc knows that the business sale is about to close. What an accident? Or was it? Marc shares this message with Abbie in a distraught state, she consoles him and they kiss. It is sad how focused they are on their careers and how it prevents the development of their relationship.
Chapter 26: “How to Get Started” (Link), Pages 161 – 168
Marc attends his final executive MBA course on “Rules of Flow” taught by Rick Silver. They discuss four common scenarios on how to deal with project constraints. Lastly, Silver identifies that the ultimate constraint in an organization is leadership time and their ability to focus attention on the highest value opportunities.
Chapter 27: “The Contingency Plan” – END – (Link), Pages 169 – 171
In the final chapter, we resolve the open issues – and the dreadful waiting game unleashed at the close of Chapter 25 by Isaac on Marc, his son and most valued employee, is brought to a close. Isaac discloses the terminal disease, shared first in Chapter 18, to Marc, and his sister, Sam, who has flown in for the dinner. Marc will be given the company to run, Sam will get a share of ownership – but had conveniently signed away interest in running the business already. Isaac has admired the ‘new ways’ that Marc has brought to the business and been giving him space to run – although to the reader it looked like abandonment.
In the final chapter, we resolve the open issues – and the dreadful waiting game unleashed at the close of Chapter 25 by Isaac on Marc, his son and most valued employee, is brought to a close. Isaac discloses the terminal disease, shared first in Chapter 18, to Marc, and his sister, Sam, who has flown in for the dinner. Marc will be given the company to run, Sam will get a share of ownership – but had conveniently signed away interest in running the business already. Isaac has admired the ‘new ways’ that Marc has brought to the business and been giving him space to run – although to the reader it looked like abandonment.
Marc is so fired up to take the reins that he is now interested in talking with the private group not as a buyer of Wilson Advanced Solutions, but as a potential investor. We don’t get an easy resolution on his future with Abbie, but let’s just imagine that everything works out well. In the short, three page chapter, we don’t get much exposure to Marc’s reaction to his father’s pending death. The only real emotion is the outrage from Sam that her brother may have known before her. As a reader, I feel we’re provided a not-so-cryptic look into some historic events in the Goldratt family.
As an author, Dr. Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag has resolved one of the toughest parts of The Goal; that book really ends at Chapter 31, but then continues on for nine more chapters – nearly 80 more pages! By resolving the education message of the book coincident with the plot resolution – the passing of the business to Marc from Isaac, things are more neatly wrapped up.
Best Writing, Quotes (Pages 169 – 171)
“Did you know that Dad is sick?” Sam to Marc at their parent’s house, Page 169.
“And as you wished, you will receive your share, but will not be involved in any management decisions.” Marc to his daughter, Sam, Page 170.
“I wanted to give you space to try this new of running things.” Isaac says to Marc, Page 170
“It’s still early, but it is clear that you are on to a much better way of managing our projects.” Isaac to Marc, Page 170
“The company is yours now.” Isaac, Page 171
“I’m not looking for a buyer, I’m looking for an investor.” Page 171
Marc attends his final executive MBA course on “Rules of Flow” taught by Rick Silver. They discuss four common scenarios on how to deal with project constraints. Lastly, Silver identifies that the ultimate constraint in an organization is leadership time and their ability to focus attention on the highest value opportunities.
Best Quotes, Writing (Pages 161 – 168)
To help calm things down Rick says, “We all want the same thing. We want to go from a reality where we have frequent delays, things take forever and we are constantly multitasking to a reality where the lead times are much shorter and the chaos goes away. Let’s discuss how to facilitate this transformation.” The professor opens the final chapter in his classroom, Page 161.
“Remember, we don’t care about the productivity of a single worker, we ask what are the units that need to move faster in order to improve the flow of the whole system.” Rick speaks to student Ted, Page 162.
Strategy 1: “Freeze a large percent of the projects and keep the ones that are close to completion, or the ones with the highest priority, in the WIP.” Marc thinks of his flow strategy, Page 162.
“If they cannot assist in other projects, assign them to help with full-kitting.” Page 163
Strategy 2: Kill bad projects.
“We found that triage is not only about cancelling work packages with low value. We also came up with new high-value ideas that should have top priority.” Page 163
Strategy 3:
“In project environments where there is a massive amount of integration and people are constantly stuck because things are missing, it makes sense to start with full-kit.” Professor Silver highlights an aspect of construction projects, page 164
Strategy 4: “The fourth strategy that I’d like to mention is relevant to project environments that suffer from bad outcomes where people have to fix the same problems again and again. In these cases, dosage is likely the preferred strategy to control WIP.” Page 164
“The managers and experts are usually the most precious resource in the operation and are also the most scarce. Which means that they are the ones who are in most demand. They are the constraints, the resources with the least capacity in the system.” Rick to the class, Page 165.
“That may indicate there are too many projects in WIP.” Page 165 – what happens if leadership is overwhelmed?
“First, identify these few people are in fact your system’s constraint. Then figure how to exploit the constraint – how to make the best use of the time.” Rick shows how theory of constraints makes strategy a core answer to project management, Page 166.
“Your experts will be devoting a large percentage of their time to analyzing upcoming projects and full-kitting them. Get good people to help them. That will not only make your experts’ work more efficient, it’s the best way to grow your next experts from within.” Page 167
“For companies who are serious about it, who have the discipline to follow through and the confidence to endure this amazing cultural change, even the sky is not the limit.” Marc reflects, Page 167.
Big moves in the plot! Marc gets a call for “Mr. Wilson” and accepts it, but it was really a call to his father and now Marc knows that the business sale is about to close. What an accident? Or was it? Marc shares this message with Abbie in a distraught state, she consoles him and they kiss. It is sad how focused they are on their careers and how it prevents the development of their relationship.
Best Writing, Quotes (Pages 155 – 159)
“He has been avoiding his father since their argument about gate zero. He didn’t want his father to stop any more of his initiatives, and to his relief, his father didn’t make much effort to talk with him, either.” Marc hasn’t spoken to his father about the changes he’s made, Page 155
Isaac is also Marc’s manager.
We’d previously shown that hand-offs between managers and team members is essential to good flow; these two have not spoken in months.
“He can’t believe that he’s hearing about it by chance just because the buyer’s assistant, or whoever he was, called the wrong Wilson.” Marc learns of the potential private equity buyer through a mistake phone call, Page 156.
“It can’t wait.”
“Saturday, Marc,” says his father and the line goes dead. Page 157.
Marc’s father has a terminal disease and does not tell him.
Marc calls his boss because he has important business questions and is put off.
Isaac is not an impressive leader or father.
“She puts her hand on his shoulder to console him.” Abbie consoles Marc when he tells her what’s going on, Page 158.
“The kiss is exactly as he had imagined.” Marc and Abbie, Page 159.
Marc attends Professor Rick Silver’s Executive MBA course on Rules of Flow. The class discusses how to allocate times to buffers – usually 1/3 is a good rule of thumb. They discuss the ‘fever’ chart to track project timeliness. Marc realizes that a lot of the minutiae he tracks from his team has now become busywork as he has cut the number of projects and increased the flow of WIP.
Best Quotes, Writing (Pages 143 – 153)
“If your due dates are not set in stone, then most likely removing the obstacles to your projects’ flow is all you need to focus on. But,” Rick raises his index finger to emphasize what he is about to say next, “if meeting the due dates is key in your line of work, then in addition to managing the flow you also need to take precautions to ensure you meet your deadlines.” – Page 143
“A good rule of thumb is to take a third of your estimated time for the project and use it as your buffer.” Rick to the class, Page 144.
“You may need to ask a few questions but sooner or later they’ll tell you that their estimates consist of the actual time they think it will take them to perform their task, plus safety they believe they need to guard against issues that may come up.” Rick to the class on creating psychological safety for teams to properly estimate due dates, Page 145.
“When people approach their manager asking for more time, the first thing the manager should do is grant them the time they asked for.” Professor Rick Silver to the class, Page 146.
Kiara says, “So, after we grant the time people asked for, we need to look into what caused the delay, and if we find out that people did not adhere to the expected behaviors they should beheld accountable for it.” Page 147
“Another thing that managers sometimes find,” Rick continues, “is a person or other resource that is busy to the extent that queues of work start to pile up in front of them.” Page 148
This is similar to how Alex Rogo finds that heat treatment is a constraint in the original Goldratt text for The Goal in Chapter 18.
In that book, product inventory accumulates in front of an oven, which the team had been ignoring. They had falsely assumed that the NCX-10, a robot, was the constraint.
“This is a project status chart, or a ‘fever chart’ as we sometimes call it. As you can see, as long as you complete a larger percent of the project relative to the percentage of buffer you consume, you’re in the green and everything is fine.” Rick Silver to the class, Page 149
“Whenever someone approaches us asking for additional time, we grant it to them but we look into what caused the delay and respond in accordance to what we find out.” Rick to the class, Page 150.
“A word of caution. If you don’t properly control your WIP, don’t bother with monitoring the buffers – you will consume them for sure.” Rick to the class, Page 151.
“When someone messes up in a way that causes a considerable delay, we dig deeper and look into what caused the delay in the project. We ended up adding more and more details to our status reports to make sure we don’t overlook them again. Over time we went into finer and finer detail and by now the lists we cover in our status reports are rather long.” Marc shares the status of the elaborate paperwork required of his teams to the class, Page 151 – 152.
“Letting to of checking the status of these many details shouldn’t be taken lightly. He has been relying on these status reports to hold his people accountable for as long as he can remember. But does he really need them anymore? Most of the screwups were a result of the chaos they operated in, but now that they are avoiding a lot of the bad multitasking and having full-kits, people can concentrate and they make fewer mistakes.” Marc reflects on changes he can make, Page 152.
“After the past few months they were used to his unorthodox ideas. It’ll be fine.” Marc closes his thoughts and the chapter, Page 153.
If there was an extended Goldratt universe, along the lines of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (“MCU“) then Rules of Flow has now added two new athletic activities – weight training in RoF 15 “Enough Weight, Enough Repetitions” and now a long day out cycling with Marc and his nephew Jack. Marc focuses on time as the constraint to their capacity to go riding, while his nephew gently reminds him that their power – a function of their training, nourishment, and energy – is also a constraint. They must meter their food and water, otherwise they won’t be able to complete the circuit they’ve chosen.
Best Writing, Quotes
“While Dave makes sure they have everything they need, Marc rides in circles in the driveway, getting used to the bike and reacquainting himself with using clip-in pedals.” Page 137, Dave has the full kit available for Marc, because his father, Jack, is a cyclist.
“You might want to pace yourself.” Dave says to Marc on Page 138.
“He needs to find a way to explain this to his uncle.” Page 138
Dave gets his uncle to see his point by asking his uncle to explains something to him.
This is very similar to the Socratic method used by Jonah in The Goal.
“In our case, we had six or seven hours of daylight, so I asked you to choose a route of four to five hours and left a couple of hours as a buffer.” Marc explains buffers to Dave on Page 139.
“If you run out of energy, you’re in trouble. So, in addition to time, there is something else that we need to watch today, and that’s our energy.” Dave explains to Marc that time is not the only constraint, Page 140.
“All the food we have for the ride is what’s in our pockets.” Dave explains to Marc, Page 140.
“We can’t afford to run out of power, but we don’t want to eat too much, either.” Dave to Marc, Page 141.
“When something important is at stake, you better have buffers.” Page 141.
“Once they started to implement the rules of flow, the work got tight; they let go of a lot of safety. But unexpected delays are bound to happen, and they have no buffers.” Marc recalls his concerns from the end of Chapter 22 now at the end of Chapter 23, Page 142
I was hard on Dr. Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag for her earlier writing – here she does a wonderful job facilitating a classroom discussion that builds off of complex topics I first learned of reading her father’s work, and she does a masterful job. Towards the end of the goal, after Rogo’s promotion, there is a great deal of ‘written thought’ in chapters that detail more complex topics around cultural change and the goals of an organization, Chapter 36 is a good example. In Chapter 22 of Rules of Flow, Dr. Efrat brings in many of those topics and does so after outlining a topic – dependent events and statistical fluctuations – that drives variability in project execution and planning. Her father extended the topic and its impact to give it depth; her master stroke here is instead to bring the topic together to show its impact and drive home the importance of short communication loops and psychological safety when working on projects.
This chapter is just as good as Chapter 20, the Turkey Dinner Chapter, in the lively pacing and the importance of the message.
Best Quotes, Writing (Pages 127 – 136)
“Working on projects involves considerable risk management; uncertainty is pretty much the name of the game.” Professor Rick Silver, Page 127
“They’ll give a much higher estimate; an estimate that they believe they can meet even if something goes wrong.” Ted to Professor Silver, Page 128
Workers don’t want to be late, so they all sandbag a little.
Each of those sandbags, those buffers, accumulates – extending the projected completion time farther than is pragmatic.
The constraint is transparent communication and a common planning method.
Ted doesn’t buy it.”If there is so much safety, then how come we don’t see many projects finish ahead of time?”
“That’s because you’re doing a very good job wasting it,” says Rick. An exchange on Page 129
“What you are describing is a classic example of another phenomenon that wastes safety: Parkinson’s Law.”(7) Rick recites, “the work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” – Page 130
This is the seventh and final reference in the book.
Rick continues, “There are also other cases in which people finish their tasks early, but they are reluctant to report it.” – Page 131.
Psychological safety is essential to effective leadership and project execution.
Team members must have confidence their candid feedback will be well received, otherwise flow of information becomes a constraint.
“Once he limited the number of projects his people work on in parallel, the chaos went away, and they were able to really focus on the few projects they were working on.” Marc reflects during class, Page 131
“Once you remove the major obstacles the main thing that happens is that the flow of projects gets going.” – Page 132.
“Like, a week ago my team found a problem that could be easily fixed by another team. We asked our manager if we could transfer the task to them or spend a lot more time working on it from our end.” He chuckles. “As a matter of fact, we’re still waiting for her to decide.” Classmate Charlie highlights how decision making becomes a higher level constraint, Page 132.
“The experts and managers need to be as efficient as possible and do their best not to hold the projects back.” Professor Silver highlights the constraint of leadership and decision making, Page 133.
“Solving problems should become one of their top priorities.” Professor Silver on Leadership and Decisions, Page 134.
“Everyone should be encouraged to bring up problems as soon as they surface so that they can be addressed as early as possible.” Marc says to the class, Page 135.
“If you have a task that should take ten days and you wait until the eight or ninth day to alert your manager that something is wrong, most probably won’t finish the task on time. But if you alert the manager on the first or second day and it’s a high priority for them to help you, there is a much better chance the problem will be resolved without a delay in the project.” Rick explains the importance of candor and quick communication to the class, Page 134.
“You bet it’s different,” Rick emphasizes. “It is a real cultural change.” Page 134.
“He can’t shake the feeling that something is missing, but he can’t put his finger on it.” Marc thinks to himself as he leaves class on Page 135.
Fred Lybrand 
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