Six Lessons: My Sixty-Minute Masterclass with Eli Goldratt

by Clarke Ching

A special treat for fans of Eli Goldratt and the Theory of Constraints. From the In November 2009, I interviewed Eli Goldratt about his latest business novel Isn’t it Obvious for my TOC Thinkers’ podcast. In true Eli fashion, rather than dwell on the book’s details, he lifted the conversation up and spent the next hour explaining the Six Lessons he had hidden in the book – none of which, I confess, were obvious to me at the time. They were, I realised much later, some of the more profound lessons Eli had learned over his lifetime of teaching people. This short book is the lightly-edited transcript of that 60-minute chat - what I've come to think of as my masterclass with Eli Goldratt. The original audio and transcript are available - free of charge - at www.clarkeching.com.

27 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 12, 2017

Reviews

[Jack Vinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this kind of nugget-filled discussion makes me think there are always layers in what we read - particularly in the kind of writing Goldratt excelled in. Now I need to revisit a couple books.

I’m fairly sure I’ve read this previously, and I’ve certainly listened to the original interview from Clarke’s podcast.

[Kent R. Spillner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short Interview with Eli Goldratt

The interview itself is fantastic, 5-stars! However, it's so short! I realize their call was only scheduled to last for an hour, and I imagine Eli was a very busy man, but I would have loved them to keep talking longer, and in more detail. So I'm taking one star off for that.

I'm taking a second star off because the best parts of the interview are merely references to Eli's various books. From the content of this interview I gather that Clarke was very familiar with those other books, but in preparing this interview for publication I wish he took the time to add some additional notes summarizing the books, or the specific chapters/sections that Eli mentions, so that readers have more context to follow their conversation.

[Alistair MacDonald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent. There are some good insights here from the father of TOC. This book is definitely worth reading of you're learning TOC. I was surprised that Goldratt thought The Choice was his most important book. In hindsight, I think I see why. (It's bigger picture, and you are stepped through the philosophy, and TOC logic from a sceptics-eye view.)

[Dr. Tathagat Varma · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing new or remarkable.