I have written about Goal
Trees (a.k.a. Intermediate Objectives Maps) numerous times on my blog, but
because I have some new thinking, or maybe thinking I haven’t written about
here before, the next few postings will be a about how I am using Goal
Trees. I want to state up-front that H.
William Dettmer (Bill) must be given the utmost credit for developing this
wonderful tool and I encourage all of you to read some of the remarkable
insights Bill has given to the world at large.
In my humble opinion, Bill Dettmer is probably the most knowledgeable
person in the world today in terms of how the Thinking Process Tools should be
effectively used. This statement is not
meant to diminish the rest of the TOC gurus, but rather to acknowledge that
Bill’s thinking is more in line with how I approach improvement efforts.
I guess what I’m try to say
is that Dettmer’s teachings have shaped my approach to organizational
improvement more than anyone else in the world and I am forever indebted to
him. I also want to state up-front that
I am a Jonah and not a Jonah’s Jonah. A
Jonah is someone who has gone through the Jonah training course and either did
or did not become certified through the TOCICO certification process. On the other hand, a Jonah’s Jonah is someone
who is certified to teach the Jonah course.
I fall into the category of someone who has received the training, but
did not become certified. So if you are
having trouble using the TP tools as part of a system’s thinking analysis, then
this series of postings might be helpful to you.
I remember struggling
through the Jonah course, but I finished it and felt good that I had done
so. I also remember struggling with
using the TP tools in that it took so very long to run through a full TP
analysis. Like many others, I wasn’t
very good at applying what I had learned.
I mean I used the Current Reality Tree (CRT) and the Conflict Resolution
Diagram (CRD) routinely, but it terms of tying all of the tools together to
undertake a full system analysis, I wasn’t very successful. And as good as Bill Dettmer and my co-author
of Epiphanized, Bruce Nelson are,
they have both reported that the teams they taught had difficulty arriving at
the same core problems. Dettmer has
reported that the big hurdle he has observed was that most people had a
difficult time with the CRT. It seems as though he had different students from
the same organization working on the same system problem independently and each
of them saw their organization’s problems somewhat differently. And although there were commonalities, they
reached different statements of the organization’s core problem. Dettmer goes on to say that “this is a
problem for any method that purports to be rational and scientific because the
CRT is all about problem definition.” I
witnessed these same problems during my TP training.
When I was first introduced
to the Goal Tree, or as it was referred to then, the Intermediate Objectives Map, I breathed a sigh of relief. I did so because I found the Goal Tree to be
such an effective tool for not only strategizing, but also for tying together a
strategic improvement initiative and system’s problem solving statement. I have used it many times since those days
and have even expanded its usage in other ways.
When I first began using the Goal Tree, I was working for a helicopter
Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) contractor to the United States
Army. It was such an easy tool to use
and was easily learned and embraced by the staff of the MRO contractor. In less than 2 hours, without any prior
training, the contractor’s executive team had developed a strategic Goal Tree which
was used to develop their improvement plan.
And we didn’t stop at the strategic level, as we had each subordinate
department (e.g. Human Resources, Engineering, Quality, Maintenance, etc.)
create their own Goal Tree.
Perhaps, before going any further, I should go back to
basics and explain the Goal Tree in a bit more detail for those not familiar
with it. In addition, it would probably
help the readers if I talked a bit about the original Thinking Process (TP)
tools. In my next posting, I will do
both of these in more detail.
Bob Sproull
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