The book is about Alex, a plant manager who is in the middle of a very difficult situation. Everything seems to be falling apart. Shipments are always late, backlog is growing, factory is bleeding money though every single person is working hard all the time. The VP comes to the factory and asks about an order that is seven-weeks overdue. He goes into the factory floor and asks folks to stop everything and work on the order that he wants to be done. He yells at the machinist and he quits. The VP tells the manager that the order has to go out today no matter the cost. Also that the factory is running so badly that it will be shut down in 3 months. The manager goes on the floor and finds out that the machinist who quit earlier, is crucial to get the work done fast! To add to all this, his wife is completely upset with him since he is mostly at office and does not give enough time to the family. Tonight he was supposed to take his wife out and it turns out to be an allnighter to deliver an order that VP has asked for. Phew!
If anyone thinks that this is a far fetched scenario, I assure you that it is not. It is a day-to-day reality at most of the tech companies, especially the ones on the cutting edge, not to mention Startups. As someone who worked at online companies for the last 15 years, close to a decade at ebay and six years at PayPal, this situation is all too familiar to me. Of course, it depends on the team and role but an online company is 24/7 and unanticipated issues can happen anytime. With SRE on your back and a lot of people asking questions, you could hear the collective heartbeat of the executive team and also the sound of money going down the drain, when there is a production P0 at hand. Impacting the livelihood of merchants is another thing that would spring you to action.
But the story is not a sombre one. Alex, the plant manager is able to get out of the trouble. He makes a remarkable turnaround and posts profits every month and delivers orders ahead of time. He also wins back the love of his wife and gets time to spend with his kids.
All because he gets a chance to present his problem to his professor in the past and the professor, a wise man, asks a series of great questions. The questions get Alex thinking and he finds solutions by working with his team. The key inputs are the questions raised by the ‘Yoda’ professor, Jonah.
When one is close to the ‘factory’, one tends to dismiss theoretical scientists as moutain-top hermits who are not close to code and don’t know the realities. But the book proves that for critical thinking, one doesn’t have to be working at the lathe, one could as well be outside and observe the workings to analyze what is wrong. This is what Jonah does.
The biggest takeaway from the book was that one needs to be clear about what the Goal is. The goal of a company is to make money. Increase throughput, reduce inventory and reduce the operation expenses. Look at the whole operation and find out bottlenecks, reduce bottlenecks to improve throughput. The key thing is to sell quality products which could translate in software terms to ‘ship code’.
Planning makes all the difference. The team is able to deliver a sudden order of 1000 parts without overworking or spending time in the weekends because they do things in a methodical manner.
Overall, it is a great book and I’m so glad that someone recommended this to me. For new managers, it might help them be better managers, for existing managers who are finding it tough to juggle all the balls in the air, it would offer hope - to think, to look for new solutions, and be optimistic. The best thing is, it is a business book that is written as a story, a thriller, where you’re turning the next page to find out what happened!
The Goal on Amazon - The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement