The Thinking Processes
The Thinking Processes emerged as TOC practitioners worked with organizations that needed to identify their core constraints and how to manage or elevate them. They needed the answers to three deceptively simple questions:
• What to change?
• To what to change?
• How to cause the change?
The Thinking Processes are based on the scientific method, to which is added a simple visual language, the Thinking Process Diagrams, that are used for describing and reasoning about situations, arguments, and plans using the language of Cause and Effect. There are two basic kinds of reasoning: Sufficient Cause and Necessary Condition.
The Thinking Process Tools
From the basic Thinking Processes developed several techniques called the Thinking Process Tools designed to answer the three questions. The tools provide the ability to develop a complete picture of a system’s core constraints and how to manage them. Tool | Thinking Process | Starting Point | End Result | Current Reality Tree (CRT) | Sufficient Cause | A set of undesirable symptoms | The core cause of the symptoms (constraint) | Evaporating Cloud | Necessary Condition | A perceived conflict underlying a constraint | Possible win-win solutions | Future Reality Tree (FRT) | Sufficient Cause | A proposed solution | Necessary changes that