As discussed in the previous post the tools include:

• Prerequisite Trees: For determining steps and order to achieve a goal
• Goal Trees: For specifying and clarifying the core conditions of a goal
• Current Reality Tree: To outline the cause and effect of the current circumstances
• Future Reality Tree: Project expected consequences for actions you take
• Conflict Clouds: Expose assumptions and causes behind seemingly incompatible positions

When I have learned how to use the tools, I have found that there is a sort of journey which you can take when exploring an idea or problem. You do not have to always follow this path strictly. With time, you will know where to take a short-cut straight to a specific tool.

The Journey Begins

It most often begins with a basic plan for where you are trying to get. A Prerequisite tree is a fantastic tool to create such a plan. It can even help to bring clarity around what your journey is aiming for in the first place.

The main approach with the Prerequisite Tree is to identify known/perceived obstacles in your way and work out how they may be overcome. We don’t worry about how that can be achieved for now. We use the tree to arrange the order for these solutions, so we can have focus and avoid biting off too much.

The second book in the Yani series for children which introduces these tools calls this an ‘ambitious target’ which shows how we can use these to bring a plan together even if it may seem impossible at first.

Understanding Your Goal

You now have a set of sub-goals to overcome specific obstacles. This is where a Goal Tree can be helpful. They aren’t tools which feature in the Goldratt books but were introduced by H. William Dettmer when he wrote a detailed overview of The Logical Thinking Process . That book is quite hard to get hold of these days but provides an in-depth guide to the logical reasoning and steps to apply and build these trees.

The purpose of the Goal Tree is to clarify just what the goal means. Dettmer prefers these over the prerequisite tree for this, but I see them as a useful addition. Here you build a clear definition of what is (and by extension isn’t) in the goal. This is through specifying the key “Critical Success Factors” for the goal and then what “Necessary Conditions” support those factors.

This helps you know what the characteristics of the ‘world’ will be when you have achieved your goal. You can then use this as a filter for looking at problems and actions you want to take. By reviewing them against the goal tree you can determine if they are truly relevant to your actual goal.

Again we see the tools providing focus when working through your thoughts.

Getting Real

It’s critical to know where you are if you intend to get where you are aiming to go. This is where the Current Reality Tree comes in. It looks at the relevant details of why you are not already achieving your goal. This will produce a list of problems (known as Undesirable Effects – UDE). If we have a goal tree we can check if these UDEs are related to the goal or not. We can also use intuition if we already have a clear understanding of our goal.

We are trying to identify the root cause or causes behind where we are. That root cause is the constraint in the Theory of Constraints (TOC), and one which when broken can start setting the world right.

We consider the UDE as symptoms and look to identify what their cause is. Some times we will find that they share a common cause, other times one may cause the other, either directly or indirectly. Repeating this process will eventually identify the root cause.

Strictly speaking, a single cause should be identified, but you may identify two or more which are not caused by a common cause you can control (e.g. both may be caused by a legal requirement which you cannot alter)

Dealing with conflict

Before we start thinking about the future we often see that the root cause we have identified in our problems is due to a conflict. This isn’t an argument, but rather two opposing positions which seem irreconcilable.

By identifying the underlying needs, and the common purpose these conflicting positions have, we can then review the assumptions driving those positions. This then allows mitigating one side of the conflict or another such that the core needs and common goals are still achieved, thus creating a win-win situation.

This Conflict Cloud is the tool used to draw out those needs and assumptions. It helps us understand why we think given needs are met by the given position, and these assumptions can be explored. Perhaps they don’t provide the need as we thought, or we may be able to identify actions which mean those are not requirements any more. This ultimately breaks the conflict and allows us to proceed with a new solution.

Working towards the future

Once we have thoughts on how to resolve underlying problems we can begin to move towards our future state. This too is based on assumptions; We can make some of those assumptions a little clearer using a Future Reality Tree.

This tree is much like the Current Reality Tree, but we work forward from solutions rather than back to causes.

We add our ideas (called injections) and then identify what effect this would cause. These effects can then cause additional effects until we can identify a previous symptom which has been addressed and is now a ‘good condition’.

Sometimes we realise there’s not enough of an impact being made, and we need more changes to introduce some additional effects to solve those problems.

Now we can see that our ideas should resolve our problems, and validate with others our thinking and the assumptions made. We can even discover the bad side effects which will crop up, and think about counter-measures to those side effects (negative branch trimming).

Conclusion

We can see there are a collection of tools which help us explore problems and solutions logically. They can be combined when working through ideas with another person. We can reach for specific tools if we already have an existing shared understanding.

We can also bring these thoughts and conclusions to a broader audience, and allow them to clarify our thinking further still. This focus helps solidify plans and objectives across huge organisations, as well as build structure and guidance for individuals.

I aim to share a few stories of how I have used these tools or how we may use them to examine issues we see in the world.