Essential Dynamics with Derek Hudson

Kristen shares insights on why the principles we discuss are so hard to implement, when to eliminate constraints and when to organize around them, and how it all comes back to people. "If we can't solve significant problems for people, then what are we doing?"

Show Notes

Kristen Cox is on LinkedIn and at Stop Decorating the Fish.
Derek Hudson is at derekhudson.ca.
See full show notes at the Essential Dynamics Wiki.

What is Essential Dynamics with Derek Hudson?

Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!

Reed:

It's essential dynamics, the dynamics that are essential. We are glad to be back and happy to have you listening. I'm Reed McColm, your host, and, I want to welcome once again the reason that we do this and the inventor of all philosophies dynamic, mister Derek Hudson. Are you there, Derek?

Derek:

Hey, Reed. I'm here, and I just wanna thank you for all the work you do as host and call you out one more time. I didn't invent anything. I'm just trying to pay attention to what's happening in the world and make sense of it.

Reed:

I know that, Derek, but I lie a lot as the host. Derek, we have a special guest here today with us, and I'm very eager to see her.

Derek:

So, Kristen Cox is with us. She gets the prize for being the first person to be on three times.

Reed:

Yeah. It's exciting. And it's what's really, really interesting is that since we've seen her, she's had two more children. So that's, so I'm interested to see how things are going for it.

Derek:

So so, you know, we really shouldn't tell Utah jokes here, so, you know, might have to cut that one out. But anyway, Kristen, great to have you back.

Kristen:

Yeah. Three times is the charm, I hope.

Derek:

Three times well, you know, we might We might get some clarity in this one. I really like what we talked about last time, you talked about making the implicit explicit, because there's so much stuff that people just, you know, we just accept, we don't think about, we don't question, because it's hard. Mhmm. You have to do the work and you have to think through things and it's maybe a little bit easier to kind of just take what life skills you and be a bit of a robot. One of the things that I'm really interested in is, I'm just going to take a minute to talk about my theory of constraints journey, and then I want to ask you about yours.

Derek:

Mhmm.

Kristen:

I

Derek:

think I shared this on a podcast, but in 1997, I started as a chief financial officer for a high-tech company, and we were developing a component for another company that was also a startup. And and, they were familiar with the theory of constraints and insisted that we all read the goal. And so a couple months after joining the company, I started reading the goal and, immediately found myself on a backpacking trip in the mountains with some scouts. And, of course, the story and the goal is that the guy understands constraints when he's hiking with scouts in the mountain. So I lived it.

Derek:

It was all there right in front of me. And, so I immediately, embraced it and did what I could with it in the in the various situations that I've been. Well, what surprised me is so that was, twenty four years ago, add another probably ten years to that in terms of, you know, the the material being out there. I think it's compelling, but it hasn't received a broad, understanding and acceptance that I would think it deserves, and I think it could help a lot of areas of society. You've been a passionate advocate for the the thinking that comes from theory of constraints.

Derek:

What's your take on why is it so hard?

Kristen:

I think a few things. One, TSC strives to be simple, and I don't think people believe in simple. I think people believe in sophisticated, complex solutions. And I find that baffling sometimes. It seems almost that if we've been in an organization for many, many years, and we're still not getting a breakthrough result, it must be because it's incredibly simple solution.

Kristen:

I don't think we trust simple. I also think it's very easy to stay vague and unclear. It's very difficult to become clear, and it's much easier just to kind of talk in meetings nonstop, but I actually have a dictionary of terms I see organizations use that just drive me bonkers, like integrate, align, duplication of effort, transformation, innovation. I just go on and on.

Derek:

You ever yell bingo in the middle of a meeting?

Kristen:

Yeah. I know. I still care. It's really you could almost do bingo because these words are so used. And it gives us this sense of, like, we're doing something, but we're not clear.

Kristen:

So I think simple, we don't believe in, and vague is much easier than clear. And TOC demands simplicity, and it demands clarity. And when you have those two, then you can focus. I think those are big hurdles. There's a

Derek:

Are you

Reed:

saying TLC?

Kristen:

TLC.

Reed:

Are you saying TLC? Tender loving care?

Kristen:

Oh, I need that too. I need TLC and TLC. But yeah.

Reed:

I don't know what that means.

Kristen:

TOC is theory of constraints. Sorry. So the idea that TOC. Yeah. There's a this

Reed:

I'm sorry. I

Kristen:

Yeah. No. Good clarity. Because if you don't know, the audience doesn't know. So it's the idea that there's

Reed:

That's what I'm here for.

Kristen:

Yeah. Thank you. That there's something big that if we could remove that one thing. And I'm always looking at it, Derek, from three perspectives. What's the constraint for the customer?

Kristen:

What's that problem? What's the constraint in the organization, like in the business model? And then what's the constraint in execution? And I think sometimes TOC is branded as a process improvement tool when it's much broader, just than a process improvement tool.

Derek:

Yeah. My experience is that if you take TOC down to the process level, you can solve you can, you know, break the process constraint

Kristen:

Mhmm.

Derek:

And get a little bit of improvement, but you're still you're still asked the wrong question Mhmm. Or you still have a policy, constraint or confusion up somewhere up the line Mhmm. You're you're not gonna get anything that you can consider breakthrough improvement because you're not really solving the problem.

Reed:

Yeah. Is the goal to get rid

Kristen:

of the constraint? So, Derek, I love your reviews on this. So, yes and no. So for the customer, absolutely, what's blocking them for the organization, usually, it's the issue of scaling, getting more and more. But in operations, usually the the hardest issue, yes.

Kristen:

But you usually wanna, engineer around the constraints. So sometimes people define constraints as like a bottleneck, and sometimes it is. But let me give you an example in juvenile justice services. You know, this is basically prison for kids, you know, not a, not a happy scenario, and there's a lot of things

Reed:

I call it, I just like to call it home.

Kristen:

You like to call it home? Yes, Reed. Well, you have direct experience, so you can inform me if what I tell you is accurate. So there's a lot you could do in this facility. Right?

Kristen:

A new evidence based model, a new case management system, you know, tons of strict stuff going on. But what's the one thing that really matters? What's the one thing? If you don't get that one thing right, nothing else really matters. And in this case, at least in this place we were working, it was the kids were challenged with making good decisions.

Kristen:

And you had to have enough what we call dosage or intensity of alternative ways to think and solve problems. And you probably, based off of the research, probably twelve to thirteen hours a week. And if you could do that, you'd have enough momentum and dosage in somebody's in these kids' lives where they can start getting some success, which perpetuates success and you change the inertia of somebody's life. So that becomes a constraint, but another way to think about it is I call it, you know, the subordination point. Like, every organizing factor.

Kristen:

Everything else in that organization, from admin to the data people to the technology to everyone needs to organize around, how do we deliver thirteen hours? And in TOC, you know, we often talk about getting more out of the constraint and breaking it. And I think that's really important. I think though the hardest part in TOC and where a lot of the magic happens, Derek, love your thoughts, is on this idea of organizing around subordinating to where the value happens. That's at the constraint.

Kristen:

You're usually at the constraint. Yeah. Derek, what do you think?

Derek:

I total I totally agree. So, Goldratt, the Ellie Goldratt, the, the founder of the theory of constraints talked about inherent simplicity.

Kristen:

Mhmm.

Derek:

And he said if there's one constraint that drives the system, then it's actually not that complex, and you can manage it. And so what you want to do is to bring the constraint down to a control point. And if you can control the system by, you know, with lever, all your stuff that happens is kind of below that threshold, then there's a lot less that you have to worry about. So so yeah, I read it's not about getting rid of the constraints, and that's sometimes it is because they're just, you know, bad constraints that are wasteful and and, you know, they don't need to be there. Mhmm.

Derek:

But at some point, we're gonna run into, as the system performs at higher and higher levels, we're gonna run into, you know, the sort of fundamental limitation, and then you wanna work with that.

Kristen:

Mhmm.

Derek:

So what I'm trying to do in my thinking in, central dynamics, in one way, is to say, well, really what we have are these dynamic or opposing forces, and when they come together in the right way, then they create amazing things. If you have no limitations, you're gonna,

Kristen:

you

Derek:

know, get infinite amounts of your of your outcome that you want. That's not really what life is like. No. So so one of one of the things I think about, and I I haven't done enough on this, is let's talk about sports like surfing or skiing, where the driver is gravity in, you know, really in both cases, ultimately, and the, and the constraint is friction. Mhmm.

Derek:

But we don't, like, you get to the top of a mountain, you don't want no friction.

Kristen:

Mhmm.

Reed:

Like, that winter also I'm sorry, Derek, but I there's also another constraint or and that's the person's skill. I I think if you put a a novice at the top of the mountain, the friction is within.

Derek:

Well well, Reid, good point because, you know, I I remember skiing on the, the men's downhill at Lake Louise, and, you know, I was kind of a busy, and, I'm not gonna go as fast as as the Olympic level downhill skiers. So I'm I'm putting my own brakes on the system. But, in in the way I'm thinking, I've got these two forces, gravity pulling me down, the friction, holding me back. And when you align those and they work, you know, with each other, then you get this amazing ski runner, this amazing ride on a surfboard, which is impossible without a constraint, and impossible without a driver. And where I go with that, and Kristen, I'd be interested in your thoughts on this, is the objective is flow.

Derek:

Mhmm. And you and you don't have flow unless you have this interaction of drivers and constraints. And it may be demands on the system, or we have to, you know, do an operation at a certain point. But when it all comes together, you've got this optimal flow.

Kristen:

Mhmm.

Derek:

And, you know, a constraint that doesn't need to be there interrupts flow, but the constraint that allows the skier to turn or a surfer to carve a wave is, that's a beautiful thing.

Kristen:

Well, I I I like how you're saying this, and, you know, I'm always trying to put friction points and constraints in the right places in the system. So, again, imagine an organization where leadership and management has no friction points. It's easy for them to launch endless initiatives, which is true. Right? They can launch.

Kristen:

They can launch. They can launch. And that's eating and consuming the time where real value is created. So let's say I'm in a hospital. I'm a doctor.

Kristen:

The most precious thing at times between the doctor and the patient. Right? That's really where the value is created. But if administration is launching so many changes that the doctor is, not able to do his or her job the way they'd like to, I haven't put friction points in the right place. So I actually want to create bottlenecks in parts of the system deliberately so that where I want flow, flow happens, and I can strain parts of the system that there's only so much of it that I need.

Kristen:

I don't want endless changes in strategy. I want just enough, and then I wanna constrain it. So the part that you know, the trick in in organizations is knowing where you want more and more of something. You can never get enough of it, and let that become unconstrained and then constrain the parts of the systems that are interfering with that. And I would add one more, I love your idea of driver, what's naturally pulling people, what's the natural incentive, motivation, the natural pull, then there's the constraint, but we also want to think about, I talk about like a woman or a man going up and down escalator, so the inertia, the momentum of the existing system may pull them back in, versus the friction point.

Kristen:

Those two plus the drivers, I think, can help us understand or give us some framework to think about, organizations.

Reed:

Well, I really appreciate that because I like your your analogy of the, hospital and the doctors needing to constrain some things in order to get the more important information. And I also like your your, example of the escalator. I remember I was stuck on an escalator for three and a half hours once. But, I

Derek:

Yeah. There there's a constraint operating there. It's the Yeah.

Kristen:

Reset reading. Maybe operator error, maybe. I'm sorry. I don't

Reed:

know. But I would like to, in some businesses, I can see getting rid of the constraint altogether. If your product is being delivered incorrectly or it always faces a bottleneck in Kansas City or something, so you get a different, delivery system. Okay. I can see that as a constraint.

Reed:

Oh, that's a solution. But what if your constraints are people?

Kristen:

What

Reed:

if what if it's your own employees or your, it's not your employees, it's your customer or something? I believe there's also a a human element here that, how do you deal with it?

Kristen:

You know, and I guess this really goes to Derek's third part of his framework, which is purpose, path, people. And, so a couple thoughts on that, you know, and I think I've gotten better at this over time, and I'm still, like I said, a work in process. But number one, I I I can't control people. I can't control what they think, do, or say, but I can create, a system or rules that allows them to achieve play winnable game. And that's the best I can do.

Kristen:

I can set up the rules so they have the best chance of playing a winnable game. And very often, we're you know, I talk about more accountability. I'll see management putting all their employees on performance plans, and then I go look at how management's designed the system. I'm like, these are employees who are in an unwinnable game. They can't win the way this thing is set up.

Kristen:

This isn't about blaming the employee. Management, take your job. Fix the system. So number one, make it a winnable game for your employees. Number two, understand sometimes because of how we measure people, we put them in a conflict.

Kristen:

Go fast, have high quality. Touch every case every day, but focus on completing cases. We put our employees in a conflict very often because we're measuring too many things. We're measuring things that aren't aligned to the goal. We haven't designed tell me how you measure me and I'll tell you how I behave, doctor Goldratt, Dirk.

Kristen:

You know, we all know this. Yep. Our measures can set our employees or our people up in great conflict. And then the third thing is people sometimes are just, you know, there is a point where they, you know, struggle maybe with the skill set. My I you know, I've had to let a few people go in my life, my career, but not very often.

Kristen:

Most of the time, I feel like a manager. Am I hiring the right person for the job? And I think that's really incumbent on management upfront to understand, you know, what does this job entail, and am I hiring the right person, or am I bringing somebody in who just is gonna struggle with this job? So then I'd say this last thing, I guess maybe is, you know, and Derek referred to it earlier about purpose, both of you did, when we were talking about the rules of the game, you know, the rules just to win and, you know, on our last episode together, we get to the traffic light two minutes earlier. Do we focus on people or projects?

Kristen:

And earlier in my career, I was always very results driven, and I'm still very results driven. But I'm learning and have learned, think I've got that down now, is that in in the process, the people matter. Do they feel heard? Can we as managers take feedback even if it's painful? Can we, emulate the behaviors we want in our own team?

Kristen:

Can we listen? You You know, this idea of go first, we always want other people to change, but somebody's gotta go first. And I think we have to do that within our own team. So there's a lot there. We can't control people, but if ultimately we're now now making people's lives better, along the way, we have to make it better, not just at the end when we get the project completed.

Kristen:

Derek, I'm gonna give you a thoughts and read on that. Alright.

Derek:

Kirsten, that's that's phenomenal. One of the things that I I think, anyway, is that when we talk about people path and purpose, the purpose only matters when it makes people's lives better. Yeah. There isn't any other purpose. Like, you can, you know, achieve an improvement in a process, but if that ultimately doesn't filter down to someone's life being better as a result

Kristen:

Then who cares?

Derek:

Or maybe thinking their life is better while they're consuming some, you know, expensive vice or something like that. But there's gotta be some value to the customer. The customer ultimately always is a person.

Kristen:

Do you think, Derek, in your model, you've created a really nice, what I will call virtuous cycle. You know, vicious cycle, virtuous cycles is the way I'm looking for fundamental challenges in the system. And you've got, you know, if somebody has the right purpose, and they know the pathway, the way to get that, and they know they're helping people, it feeds into their purpose because they see they're making an impact. And, you know, we've talked about the Seductive Seven in prior episodes and, you know, Illusion of Progress and what what do you fix? But ultimately, if we just don't know that thing, that will if if we can't solve real significant problems for people, then what are we doing?

Kristen:

Great. We did another merger and acquisition. You know? Great. We did another reorg.

Kristen:

But are people significantly, measurably better off our shareholders, our employees, our taxpayers, our customers, our citizens? And I don't mean a little bit bit off. Like, I mean significantly. And in my world, if we're not getting significant results, we're missing something. And it's that persistence and tenacity to not assume that it's not possible.

Kristen:

It's not if it's possible, it's how. And if we haven't gotten there yet, we need to go back and rethink.

Derek:

Wow, Kristen. This is phenomenal. I was very excited to find out that we could get you for the third time or all three times. Hope it's not the last though.

Kristen:

Yeah. Well, we're kindred spirits. I love your framework, and it's just great to have this conversation. I could go we could go for, like, a five mile hike and just talk about these things forever because I think they're so important. So it's just gonna be fun.

Derek:

Let's get the border open, and we'll trade hikes in the Wasatch trade. Hike hikes in the Canadian Rockies.

Kristen:

That would

Reed:

be awesome. I'll I'll zoom in. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you've enjoyed this ex this, installment of our podcast, the essential dynamics. And, I want to thank our guest, Christian Cox, who has been just phenomenal. Christian, thank you so much for joining us.

Reed:

Would you please tell us how to get in touch with you if people want to?

Kristen:

Well, Reid, now that you're my manager, I think they can just go through you. Right?

Reed:

Absolutely. I am known. In I'm in the book now. I'm on on the web as Christian Cox's best friend.

Kristen:

So I they can go to LinkedIn where I'm very active. Stopdecoratingthefish.com as well.

Reed:

Okay. Thank you. Derek, how do people find you?

Derek:

Derrickhudson.ca, but I am looking for another, URL that says cool as stopdecoratingthefish.com. Yeah. Yeah. I really like it too. Stay stay in touch.

Derek:

Meanwhile, derrickhudson.ca. Thanks.

Reed:

Okay. Well, thank you, Christian Cox. And for Derek Hudson and Brynn Griffiths, our engineer in the studio, I'm Reid McCollum reminding you to consider your quest.