It's Not Luck - Eliyahu M. Goldratt [71]
“You said it. Pete’s solution brought a solution.”
For a second I don’t get it. Then I realize how perceptive Don’s remark is. “You are absolutely right. Pete’s solution was not just a solution for his company, it was a solution for the dilemma of his clients. How can we generalize it?”
“No sweat,” he says, and starts to write, erase, move post-its around, and write again, until finally he posts the following statement: “A product that relieves prospects’ problems brings benefits—the more and bigger the problems that it relieves, the greater the benefits.”
“Very nice,” I fully agree.
“If we accept it and we accepted that ‘It’s apparent that the small changes the company introduces bring high benefits to its market’ then the unavoidable conclusion is that ‘The small changes the company introduces are those that relieve many of its market (prospects’) problems—the more problems relieved the better.’ Alex, it’s close, but I still don’t know what we can do with it.”
“What are you talking about? We have made it. We grounded our pig!” I jump out of my chair. “Don’t you see?”
He doesn’t. Not yet.
“Don, what is more effective, to address a symptom or its cause?”
“What is this? Trivial Pursuit? Of course addressing the cause is more effective than addressing the symptom.”
“What is more effective,” I continue to ask, “to address the cause of one problem, or the cause of many problems?”
Don starts to smile. “The cause of many problems. And how can we find the cause of many problems of the market? We know. Oh yes, we know. What a simple solution. How come we didn’t see it before? It’s so obvious. If we want a marketing solution for our company we shouldn’t analyze our company, we should analyze the company’s market. The solution to marketing is in the market. So simple. So obvious.”
“Yes,” I join in. “Everybody knows their UDEs, but very few know their core problem. If we want to bring a lot of benefits to the market we’d better address its core problem, not the symptoms, as everybody else is doing. And we are in a unique position to do it. We have the perfect tool for it, the Current Reality Tree.”
Don stands up, and we shake hands.
“Alex, I must tell you that I didn’t believe that anything would come out of your starting point. In my eyes it wasn’t a flying pig, it was a flying whale. But now, now it’s a different ball game.”
“Come on Don. Let’s rewrite the Future Reality Tree. This time starting with a tangible injection. Let’s see where it will lead.”
Don posts the new injection, “A Current Reality Tree on the company’s market is constructed.” “I bet this injection will trim the wings of all our original injections. They will no longer be dreams. I’m sure that they will turn into derivatives.”
“Let’s see.” I encourage him to continue. He is right. Maybe we’ll need some more injections, but we are over the hump. No more flying pigs.
“Okay. Now let me add that ‘A Current Reality Tree is a very effective way to connect problems, UDEs, to their origin.’ The derivative is that ‘The company can determine which are the deep causes in the Current Reality Tree that can be removed by the company’s type of offering.’ Alex, wait a minute. How do we know that there will be a deep cause that the company’s offering has anything to do with?”
“We know, Don. It’s okay. In any realistic case the market has more than one UDE that relates to the vendor. Not just due to its product but also due to its service, financial terms, et cetera.”
“I see,” he agrees. “And since there is more than one UDE that stems from us, we’re bound to reveal a deep cause that we can handle. That’s beautiful. It means that we will not have any problem identifying what are the small changes we have to implement in order