Theory of Constraints Handbook - James Cox Iii [544]
FIGURE 27-7a and b Marriage conflict.
How to Effect the Change?
Armed with a portfolio of TOC TP tools, we set to work in planning the curriculum. Time was the major constraint at this juncture as we had exactly one month to complete our due diligence and develop the course materials. At the same time, we were faced with the problem of how to train such a diverse audience. While the tools themselves were generic enough to address individual needs, we did not have the luxury of working one-on-one so we needed to redevelop the training materials to address all learning capabilities within a classroom environment. Anyone who has worked with such a heterogeneous audience will understand the enormity of this task. The main areas to address were marketing, course materials, and delivery.
Marketing
Marketing can be described as the activities required to persuade a client to perform a certain act or transaction through identifying and meeting the client’s needs. In this case, even though the pilot study had already been approved by Singapore Prison Services for implementation, it was equally, if not more, critical to buy-in the end client, namely the inmate audience. To achieve this buy-in and ensure a high level of understanding, heavy customization of our TOC materials was required to meet their needs. Details of when, why, what, and how the marketing was done is detailed in the next section.
Up Front Buy-in
Successful buy-in of the inmate audience was critical to the success of this project. Typical TOC trainings commence with a brief marketing overview followed by a presentation of process skills. This approach is fine when the audience already recognizes the value of TOC, for example AGI Jonah or Goldratt School participants who have opted to invest significant time and money on a course and are further along the buy-in process. As a complete contrast, our inmate audience knew nothing about TOC except that it would help them escape from the monotony of their cells.
For such a mandated audience, a strong buy-in as opposed to a marketing overview is crucial to ensure the right attitude toward the course is adopted. In a typical social work setting, it takes many sessions over a period of months to establish trust and rapport, which is not always a given either. Unless the trainer has something that the clients want or they feel the trainer can help them with, they will not buy in. In business, a similar problem but to a lesser degree is encountered with staff attending trainings to merely fulfill training hours or management instruction. Unless they truly value or buy-in to the subject matter, it is not a sustainable process. Adequate course time must be allocated for buy-in, which unless performed successfully up front, impedes on the depth of the process being understood and taught.
While it may be argued that the buy-in can be achieved progressively throughout the course, our experience has shown that it is more effective at the onset as TOC is a process that requires concepts to be understood in a sequential manner. Even for the “converted,” TOC, with its own set of rules and vocabulary, is often regarded as a tedious process, and requires a certain level of stamina to master. Layer One of the TOC Layers of Resistance (Identification of the Problem, see Chapter 20) must be established early, otherwise a serious compromise is made between the quality and quantity of material learned.
Motivation for Buy-in
How do we motivate an audience to buy-in to TOC? The marketing buy-in for TOC behavioral applications is vastly different from that of business applications. Unlike business applications, where management is motivated to implement TOC for higher profits and employees are obligated to follow instructions as part of their job, it is far more difficult to convince another individual, in the absence of any immediate tangible benefit, to change a behavior that has been developed over a lifetime. What could motivate someone to change the way