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As such, we see benefit in future research addressing multi-methodological issues, not just identifying the potential for combining methods in multi-method or multi-methodological use, not just in combining methodologies in multi-methodological use, but also assessing and clarifying the philosophical and methodological assumptions that would underpin methodological consistency and rigor in using TP in harness with other methods and tools. For example, the notion of problem templates or archetypes is well founded and accepted in the systems world in terms of identifying common systemic structure in problematic situations using CLDs (Senge, 1990; Wolstenholme, 2004). Thus, there may be merit in exploring and developing archetype clouds for archetypical dilemmas, and in the development of archetypical solutions or solution processes.
Links to Other Chapters in the TP Section
The discussion in this chapter may usefully shed light on the nature of other TOC tools and methods, their use in multiple problem domains, and their potential for use in multi-methodological intervention. As a consequence, links to other chapters may prove fruitful in focusing attention on the purpose of design, the purpose of use of the TP tools, and the other philosophical assumptions that are made about cause-effect relations, how we surface them, and how we represent them in the particular forms that are manifest as the logic trees, a belief in the existence of root causes, etc.
In addition, having demonstrated the nature of the suite of TP logic tools as being a comprehensive methodology or meta-methodology, the classificatory frameworks used in doing so may be used to shed light on the efficacy of different TP tools used in combination with each other, or used in combination with other non-TOC tools or methods, or subsumed, for example, within the OODA process developed by Dettmer (Chapter 19, this volume) to surface strategic issues and goals. Similarly, they may be used to shed light upon the S&T tree (as in Chapters 15, 18, 22, 25, and 34 in this volume).
“Once you have solved someone’s problem, you have forever blocked them from inventing those answers for themselves.”—Goldratt (1990b, 18)
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