The Goal: a process of Ongoing Improvement

DW: What’s a doctor doing advising mining companies?
AV: It’s interesting that you say that. I’m a physician, not a surgeon, In other
words, I’m a thinker, not a doer. I say that facetiously, but as a physician, it’s
all about diagnosis. And the whole process of diagnosis, whether it’s a patient
or an organization, is the application of the scientific method. Eli Goldratt
says that his Theory of Constraints is simply the application of the scientific
method. So it’s almost natural that an advisor to a mining company—in terms
of diagnosing what’s wrong and what to do about it—could be a physician. In
fact, some of the teaching materials that the Goldratt Institute uses refer to the
medical model. It asks trainee consultants: How does a doctor approach the
problem? It gives them a parallel for how you diagnose problems in
organizations.
DW: That’s interesting. Eli has said that his overriding ambition in life is
to teach the world how to think.

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AV: Right. And nothing he has done in the almost 14 years that I have known
him suggests to me that that is a facetious statement. The Theory of
Constraints is about thinking processes, it’s a subset of logic. In other words,
the scientific method.
DW: Has any of this made you a better teacher of physicians?
AV: Absolutely. Absolutely. I’ve told you that diagnosing a patient and
diagnosing a business is the same thing. But a doctor learns to diagnose by
watching other doctors. It’s not taught as a science. The processes of
diagnosis are taught, but what might be called the philosophy of diagnosis is
not taught as it is in the Theory of Constraints. The traditional approach is,
watch what I do. The approach that I’ve since followed is, let’s look at how
the scientific method works, then let’s see if we can apply this to a patient.
Most students take to this very well.