The Goal
Chapters 31 – 45

1. Give two examples from Alex’s company to illustrate the notion of “common sense is not common at all.”

First, according to the cost-accounting rules that everybody has used in the past, Alex’s company is supposed to balance capacity with demand first, and then try to maintain the flow. However, instead they shouldn’t be trying to balance capacity at all; they need excess capacity. The rule they should be following is to balance the flow with demand, not the capacity.

Second, the incentives they usually offer are based on the assumption that the level of utilization of any worker is determined by his own potential. In fact that’s totally false because of dependency. For any resource that is not a bottleneck, the level of activity from which the system is able to profit is not determined by its individual potential but by some other constraint within the system.

2. Do you feel that Socratic approach, “Don’t give the answers, just ask the questions!” is an effective way to teach or to overcome the resistance to change? Why did Julie suggest that Alex needs to learn more Soc-rate’s method from Jonah?

Yes, “Don’t give the answers, just ask the questions!” is an effective way to teach or to overcome the resistance to change. Jonah’s way of leading to the answers through asking questions, his “Socratic approach,” is very effective at peeling away the layers-the thick layers-of common practice. Alex tried to explain the answers to others, who need them as badly as they did, but got nowhere. Spelling out the answers when you are trying to convince someone who blindly follows the common practice is totally ineffective. Actually there are only two possibilities, either you are not understood, or you are understood.

Julie suggest that Alex needs to learn more Soc-rate’s method from Jonah because whenever Alex tried to ask