Goldratt's The Goal

The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt is about a plant manager named Alex Rogo and his quest of knowledge to make his company profitable again. Alex does this while battling family issues at home with his wife. In the beginning, Alex has no idea where he is going to start or even understand why they are losing money. Everything that he reads according to the numbers of the company says that he is running a very efficient company.

One of the four principles is that goals must be specific and not vague because one can easily get tangled the objective. Second, goals need to be committed and have a sense of ownership to an individual because they are more likely to attain the goal. Third, feedback needs to be given by employer or organization on how an employee is doing. Finally goals need to be difficult because it will result in better performance and the person will work harder to achieve it (Spector, 2008).

The main character in “The Goal”, Alex Rogo, manages a production plant that is unprofitable and not efficient with its resources. Alex is given a short amount of time to turn the operations at the plant around and make it an efficient, successful production plant. Throughout the book, Alex Rogo speaks to Jonah a number of times and learns a great amount of information from him. The first significant time that Alex and Jonah spoke was during their chance meeting at an airport lounge. During this conversation, Alex learned a great deal about productivity and goal setting. Jonah explains to Alex that a company has one goal and that the manager must be open about the goal. Jonah then discusses the definition of productivity with Alex and tells him that the true definition is bringing a company closer to its goal that it has set. Among these concepts that Alex learned, he also learned more about his own management style and how it could be improved. Alex learned that he must question common concepts regarding managing and that he must think differently in order to be successful.

* Create real goals. Real goals are specific, achievable, prioritized, measurable, supported by action plans, aligned with the company, linked to your goals, and accepted by you and your employees. It is vital to the success of the company, your success as a leader and the future of

Mentoring: is the process of a more experienced person advising and guiding a less experienced (and usually younger) person, typically a colleague.

Mentoring involves a manager passing on his/her knowledge and expertise to an employee. Typically, the employee has a mentor who is at management level but not directly involved in his or her work area, so that issue s can be discussed in an impartial and confidential manner.

In order to be productive all members of staff should be aware of the goals of the firm. Knowing the goals allows the manager to make effective decisions. The goals of the firm can be viewed as the motives of the entrepreneur’s who own and run the firm. There a number of goals that a firm can pursue in its day-to-day

(2) Managers should set reasonable goals. We suggest that managers should set moderately difficult goals. Goals can be a strong motivator to help the company to strive for better. According to Griffin (2011), managers should set goals that are specific and moderately difficult. A specific and moderately difficult goal can motivate people to work harder, especially if attaining the goal is likely to result in rewards (205). In addition to verbal

The novel “The Goal” by Eli Goldratt is an inspiring story of a manufacturing plant that seems to need some help staying afloat. The story explains the “Theory of Constraints” and concentrates on bottlenecks and constraints.

This paper is a book report on the novel entitled The Goal written by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox. The 40-chapter book is actually a business book written in the form of a novel that makes it interesting to read unlike other business textbook. As a novel, the book is entertaining but at the same time, very informative for management or accounting students as well as for the real-life company managers and CEOs who wanted to apply different managerial practices. The paper summarizes the novel and makes analyses in relation to Operations Management.

Everyone has those times when they wonder about where they are in life and if they truly are doing the best they are capable of. That statement there is one of the most glossed over issues in society. We are always told what needs to be done, and how to get it done in good quality and time. Businesses and people in general are relying more and more on goal oriented ideals, which isn’t a bad thing, except for when it becomes a straight routine and monotonous. Then we have the problem of goal displacement. “Goal displacement is the process that occurs when the rules become an end in themselves rather than a means to an end and organizational survival becomes more important than achievement of goals.” (Merton, 1968). Goal displacement is becoming

Edwin Locke and Gary Latham will be the first ones to openly admit there are active limitations with the goal setting theory. It is not uncommon for individual goals to conflict with organizational goals. Moreover, research has proven complex goals have sparked motivation in teams to implement strategies with substantially high amounts of risk (Knight, Durham, & Locke, 2001). Sometimes people will believe higher risk strategies produce the greatest returns, yet high-risk goals consistently result in failure as well (Knight et. al, 2001). Additionally, when individuals simultaneously create two goals there is a greater chance they exert too much energy and focus on achieving just one of those goals. This can lead to one of the goals not receiving enough attention, which can potentially result in the person failing to reach the end result in either goal. In short, these are three common limitations of goal setting that typically draw concerns from other researchers and theorists. However, it is important people are aware of the limitations that do not receive as much attention, such as team goal setting, unethical behavior in high performance goals, and subconscious goals.

The goal of a manufacturing organization is to make money. Jonah poses this as a question: "What is the goal?" and Rogo actually struggles with it for a day or two, but any manager or executive that can't answer that question without hesitation should be fired without hesitation.

I read the fictional book called, The goal: A process of ongoing improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff cox. Goldratt has an extensive history of writing novels about business problems and their solutions. His list of work includes; The race, The haystack syndrome, What is This Thing Called Theory of Constraints and How Should it be Implemented?, It’s not luck, critical chain, and necessary but not sufficient. With his most recent work being in 2009 called Isn’t it obvious focusing on retail. The authors purpose for writing this book would be to educate and show examples on how to think outside the box or solve solutions, possibly even save companies. In his own words, “This book is an attempt to show that we can postulate a very small number of assumptions and utilize them to explain a very large spectrum of industrial phenomena” (Goldratt, Intro to revised edition page 2). He states he wants to show that these methods aren’t fantasy and have been/are working in pants around the world, and says that, “Finally, and most importantly, I wanted to show that we can all be outstanding scientists. The secret of being a good scientist, I believe, lies not in our brain power. We have enough. We simply need to look at reality and think logically and precisely about what we see” (Goldratt, Introduction page 2). This story is about a failing or close to failing manufacturing plant in a place called Bearington. The novel begins with the main character Alex Rogo, a

A successful person chooses goals to achieve something that is of great value and importance to them. This in turn motivates the person to achieve the goal because when the desired outcome is very important to a person, that person will be determined to persevere. Goal setting also improves a person 's organizational and time management skills because goal setting requires prioritization and that leads to the successful and sequential completion of necessary tasks. Once a person defines and prioritizes goals a plan should be drawn out detailing how this goal will be achieved. Goals and the time-line for their completion should be clearly defined, it is also important that a person 's