Unfortunately, it is not common practice to set clear, realistic expectations of the likely value of an initiative (16). It is also uncommon to communicate that value once it has been achieved (17). As a result, many key people do not fully appreciate the value provided by the initiative (18).

Two problems occur when key people do not appreciate the value. First, if they are looking at costs versus benefits, they will get a skewed picture, especially keeping in mind that different people will have different perceptions of value. The benefits may not appear adequate relative to the costs (19). Therefore, while WI's CEO may appreciate the tremendous benefits from their reduced cycle times, a functional manager may only see that his job is less important because his firefighting skills have become irrelevant. That functional manager will be less willing to lend his support to the initiative (4).

The second problem is that the success of the initiative means that people see the problem as "solved." Unfortunately, there are still associated costs: internal experts, consulting support, licensing fees, and so on. Who wants to continue to pour time and money into a problem that is solved (20)? Often, they won't (4). In addition, do not forget the fence-sitting loop from Fig. 5-1 (box 8): Repeated failure makes people more and more skeptical that success is possible.

FIGURE 5-3 Negative branches.

There is one more ticking time bomb: business environments change over time (21). We have seen the replacement of a senior executive produce a complete change in the focus of an organization. We have also seen something as simple as a market downturn result in drastic cost cutting. In other words, the perception of what problems exist, and their urgency, changes over time (22). Again, support disappears.

All these negative branches will eventually make WI's Critical Chain initiative a legitimate target for cost reductions. Support personnel have to do more with less; management may even decide eventually to eliminate the PMO.7 The inescapable conclusion is that even the most successful and apparently well-managed initiatives are under threat. It is no surprise that people are skeptical that change can really happen.

Root Causes

Figures 5-1 to 5-3 suggest some root causes that drive the failure of change initiatives: 1. Lack of urgency (box 1) 2. An inadequate solution (box 6), including: The problem, appropriate solution, or needed results are poorly defined.

Buy-in of key players is inadequate.

The implementation plan does not address major obstacles.

Insufficient resources are applied to the solution.

3. Lack of ownership in the solution (box 10) 4. Unwillingness to set clear expectations of value (box 16) 5. Inability to communicate value (box 17) 6. Changes in the business environment (box 21) The Cycle of Results, presented in the next section, addresses the first five of these root causes. The sixth, changes to the business environment, looks like an inevitable result of doing business. However, it has a couple of important implications. First, in the midst of a change effort, management should be careful about the additional changes it can control. We have often seen new change initiatives taken on before old ones have been assimilated. We also often see key personnel moved around without regard to the impact on initiatives. Management should minimize these changes.

Second, the inevitability of changes in the business world implies that there is a finite window for any implementation to take hold. If you cannot set up the appropriate processes before the next earthquake, your initiative will eventually be in trouble.

The Cycle of Results (CORE)

The implementation feedback system used by ProChain to address the Uptake Problem is called the Cycle of Results TM (Newbold 2008, Chapter 15; also referred to as CORE). It addresses the first five root causes of failure from the previous section to create a process that builds trust. I define trust as willingness to depend on someone or something, in a specific context. The people implementing the solution must be willing to depend on that solution, continuously, into the future. People must believe that the perceived rewards will continue to outweigh the perceived costs.

FIGURE 5-4 The Cycle of Results. (Copyright 2008 by ProChain Solutions, Inc. Reprinted with permission.)

Basic Principles

Figure 5-4 shows CORE pictorially. In this picture, the conditions or states achieved are in the boxes and the actions leading to those states are on the arrows. The boxes are stacked because the meaning of the states may be different for different people. Different people may feel different types or levels of urgency, have different perceptions of value, and so on.

The cycle starts with the actions leading into Urgency: learn and analyze. It is especially important to learn and analyze the urgency that people experience to change. Suppose you are a consultant and someone asks you to help him or her implement Critical Chain for a project. Do you immediately convene the project team, or do you first try to understand why the organization wants to implement it? As discussed later with implementation planning, we may need to take many actions in order to understand what urgency people feel today and what urgency we need them to feel.

Because of its importance, Urgency is in the center. It is a necessary condition for meaningful change. Urgency may be different for each person, so for example a senior leader may experience urgency to improve revenues, a project manager may experience urgency to deliver a project more quickly, and a worker may experience urgency to finish a specific task. You will need to understand the urgency for different individuals, because they will not respond to urgency they do not feel. Very often, I have heard people say that they believed their Critical Chain implementation had urgency "because my boss says so." If it is their boss's urgency, it is not theirs. If it is not theirs, they do not really feel it. If I see on television that a building is on fire, I will feel badly for the people inside, but I probably won't run out my door to escape the flames.

How do we combine these different feelings of urgency into a whole that is synchronized around the needed improvement initiative? We need to describe a vision for the implementation, a vision that connects what the company does (and why people want to work there) with the benefits they should expect from the implementation. For example, a simple vision for WI might be, "We will improve our customers' lives and our ability to compete for their business by getting them the new widget technologies they need when they need it."

This vision should be described to the different people in the organization in their terms, in order both to set Expectations for the implementation and to tie the expectations to people's individual sense of urgency. For a Critical Chain implementation, senior leadership will need to understand the strategic and bottom-line implications. Project managers will need to understand that they will be able to focus on high-impact actions. Financial people will need to understand the financial ramifications on predictability and resource allocation. Individual contributors will need to understand that they will be allowed to focus. And so on.

Sometimes it seems that senior people set up initiatives and make promises without providing the wherewithal to actually make things happen. To avoid that, we recommend a significant planning effort, beyond any generic plans that may already exist. This has two benefits. First, it makes sure that specifics of the environment are taken into account so that they do not cause problems later. For example, the organization's structure will likely have a significant impact on the sequence of implementation activities. Second, people are much more likely to take ownership over things that they have had influence on. That is true whether you are creating gardens, businesses, or implementation plans. When it comes to organizational change, people in the organization are either part of the problem or part of the solution.

The planning process, along with related activities such as interviews with stakeholders, helps to build an initial Commitment to move forward. It won't get everyone off the fence, but it will help start the key individuals moving.8 With that in mind, we will often start a major implementation with both a senior leadership group or Steering Team and a slightly lower-level Implementation Team. The Steering Team gives planning advice and approval, the Implementation Team does the more detailed planning. They all have a say in what happens.

After some level of commitment comes implementation work, in order to create Value. Creation of value for all the key stakeholders seems to be straightforward for Critical Chain implementations because so many kinds of value can be created. Table 5-2 presents some examples of the benefits of a full enterprise implementation of Critical Chain to the different players.

We have seen these types of value repeatedly. However, this brings us to the top of the cycle: how do we know that the value was achieved? It must be measured. Table 5-2 includes some sample implementation measurements.9 One that we have found to be of great value but not commonly used is the last in the table: checklists to determine process adherence. During a weekly buffer update meeting, one would expect certain topics to be discussed: buffer consumption, recovery plans, key tasks, and so on. During functional staff meetings, one would expect discussions about how to work one task at a time. Why not use a checklist to track whether these things are happening? We have found this to be a great way to learn where help is needed.

It is never enough just to measure. The measurements must be validated against different people's expectations. In addition, once that Validation has taken place, the results must be communicated with key stakeholders. If the results are what we expect, we will reinforce that what was promised is coming true. People are much more likely to acknowledge value and continue with changes if the value is shown to them explicitly. For example, if senior leaders are consistently shown the value captured by project teams in applying Critical Chain scheduling, they will be far less likely to cut PMO funding. They will better understand the connections between continued funding and success.

If expectations are not being met, they may need to be reset. In that case, the implementation should be re-evaluated. It is important to fix problems early on. It is also important not to pretend that things are fine when they aren't. You won't be able to fool all of the people all of the time.

TABLE 5-2 Critical Chain Benefits The line from Validation to Urgency in Fig. 5-4 indicates the ongoing need to understand and analyze the level of urgency. If people say that one thing is important (for example, cycle times) but behave as if another is important (for example, costs), we may need to re-think the implementation. If the implementation produces value and apparently reduces the level of urgency, we may need to bolster the urgency with some additional actions, at least until the new processes are well established.

Many other cross-connections that are not represented here can occur during the CORE cycle. For example, expectations may need periodic adjustments based on the results of planning and implementation.

TABLE 5-3 Mapping between Root Causes and CORE As the cycle continues, expectations continue to be set and reset and commitment, value, and validation are built. All the elements may occur in parallel. Implementing and measuring, for example, do not normally stop as we communicate and replan. Some steps, such as replanning, will be skipped if they are not needed.

Table 5-3 shows the direct relationship between the root causes from Figs. 5-1 to 5-3 and the CORE achievements in Fig. 5-4. If CORE is implemented correctly and used as an ongoing process, it helps significantly in reducing or removing these root causes.

Simple Example: Cleaning the Room

CORE establishes trust that a set of changes will address an urgent need. It contains an implicit assumption: we wish the changes to continue into the future. We therefore put in place feedback loops to validate that continued trust is warranted. Let us consider a simple example.

Suppose you have a son, Billy, whom you want to clean his room. You want it done well, regularly, and without complaint. Some parents whine at their children until, perhaps, the child complies. Some threaten their children but when challenged fail to follow through on their threats. These approaches require little investment and may work a few times. However, they will ultimately fail because the child will realize that they have no reason to change. Consider instead the following approach, based on CORE.

1. Urgency, vision, expectations: Create a sense of urgency by explaining to Billy that he is not allowed to play after school until he has cleaned his room. Describe your vision of a "clean room."

2. Planning, commitment, implementation: Work with Billy to plan how the "clean room" rule will affect his daily routine. You might make allowances for certain kinds of after-school events.

3. Measure, validate: Conduct inspections, explaining what he has done well and what he has not done well.

4. Continue the cycle: Allow Billy to play or require him to stay at home, depending on the results. Adjust the rules as necessary based on changing circumstances.

This approach is much more likely to cause Billy to gain trust that you mean what you say than threatening and complaining. Of course, it may also cause you, the parent, to reconsider your level of urgency. Consider that, if you leave out any of these steps, your chances of achieving the "clean room" vision will go down. Is that vision important enough to you that you will follow all the steps?

Simple Example: TOC Practitioners Group

Suppose you are interested in starting a TOC practitioners group to share best practices. You may have several reasons for this; for example, improving the level of implementation quality and thus the credibility of TOC in your area. How should you begin?

You will definitely need a target list of people who might take part. You will want to find out their level of urgency. What do they really care about? Where is their pain? If your group includes consultants, you may decide to increase their urgency by pointing out the advantages that will be gained by those consultants who attend.

From there, you will need a vision that ties the future to that urgency. Assuming the vision and expectations you set are sufficiently compelling, people will participate in the planning, further cementing their level of commitment. From there, you would need to continue to implement, measure, and communicate. If the practitioners group does not continue to provide value, participation will wane.

Other Processes

The feedback provided by CORE is essential to building trust in the urgency and consequences of change. In this section, I draw some comparisons between CORE and a few other well-known improvement processes. I encourage you to think about feedback (or the lack of it) in various processes with which you are familiar. For example, you might analyze which of the following processes contain feedback loops, and what kinds of changes those loops reinforce: Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control10 Learn-Commit-Do11 Layers of Resistance12 Observe-Orient-Decide-Act13 Ponzi schemes The scientific method TOC thinking process tools14 TOC strategy and tactics trees15

CORE and Sales

Change requires sales, whether that means selling yourself on changes you need to make or selling others on changes they need to make.16 When I talk about sales, I don't mean the kinds of annoying tricks that are used by sales people to get you to part with your hardearned cash. Businesses that run on hard selling-pushing as hard as possible to get a sale-shouldn't expect a lot of repeat business. Buying is unpleasant and expectations are often far from reality. Instead, I am talking about selling that creates a win-win relationship between buyer and seller, a relationship that continues into the future. If a buyer of change is involved in such a relationship, she will continue the change. If she is not, she won't.

TABLE 5-4 Solution Selling Steps and CORE Elements CORE contains many elements of such a win-win selling process. It is closely related to a process called Solution Selling (Eades, 2004). Some important steps of the Solution Selling process are compared with CORE in Table 5-4.17 There are a few interesting parallels and differences that you can see from Table 5-4. The Solution Selling concept of "pain" corresponds to the CORE concept of urgency. In a selling situation, urgency is most commonly caused by pain. Consequently, Solution Sellers spend a great deal of effort understanding and exposing their buyers' pain.

In order to describe the solution as it relates to the pain or urgency, both processes require communicating a vision. The vision connects the urgency to expectations of a future in which the pain is relieved.

Solution Selling is primarily targeted at reaching an initial commitment, while CORE is primarily targeted at creating and leveraging ongoing success. Some of the resulting differences are apparent from Table 5-4. Solution Selling breaks the early stages, creating urgency and setting expectations, into more pieces. Those pieces are very important if you are driving toward an initial commitment, such as selling a senior manager on the idea of implementing Critical Chain in the first place. Very often, when selling efforts begin, people don't understand their own urgency well; creating that realization requires work and effective tools. Urgency requires less emphasis if it is already well understood by the key players.

CORE, with its emphasis on ongoing success, places more weight on later steps like implementation and validation.

Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA)

Deming (1982) refers to the PDCA cycle as a helpful procedure to follow for improvement at any stage of production.18 This cycle includes four steps: Plan (establish objectives for changes); Do (implement the changes); Check (measure the results); and Act (analyze the results).

FIGURE 5-5 CORE and Plan-Do-Check-Act.

Figure 5-5 shows how the PDCA cycle overlays CORE. The PDCA steps are analogous to the CORE actions. Plan corresponds to planning and creating ownership; Do corresponds to implement; Check corresponds to measure results; and Act corresponds to communicate, re-evaluate, and reinforce.

PDCA includes none of the CORE achievements (the rounded boxes). For the original purposes of PDCA, such as driving ongoing quality improvements, those elements may not be important. However, we have found all of them to be very important when people need to make long-term, system-wide changes.

CORE contains an unstated connection with PDCA that is important to understand. Deming suggests starting slowly in the "Do" step. As knowledge is acquired, the changes can be made more pervasive. We recommend a similar process when implementing Critical Chain in larger organizations: start with a pilot in order to gain real-life understanding before making major changes to the organization.19

Five Focusing Steps

TOC practitioners often want to know how the TOC Five Focusing Steps (5FS)-Identify, Exploit, Subordinate, Elevate, Go back to step 1-relate to CORE.20 The reinforcing loop in the 5FS process demonstrates the potential for constraints to move over time and the importance of dealing with those changes. It is a crucial loop; I have seen numerous examples of TOC production implementations that stagnated due to people's unwillingness to reidentify constraints and change behaviors as the constraints changed.

This points us to an important connection with CORE. The concept of subordination permeates the entire 5FS process. It means that everyone pitches in, working together synchronously to make sure that the focus remains on the constraints. In a sense, the 5FS are a guide showing what the people in the organization should subordinate to, namely the organization's goal and constraints. They can produce short-term benefits very quickly. CORE shows how to achieve that subordination, thus addressing the Uptake Problem-helping to cement the long-term benefits that come with ongoing improvement.

If people don't learn how to subordinate properly, an implementation of the 5FS may result in initial benefits, but the initiative probably won't last. I call this the "silver bullet" effect21: we are so tempted by the "silver bullet" of immediate benefits that we don't pay attention to negative branches shown in Fig. 5-3. You need CORE to make the changes stick.