What do you think?
Rate this book
The Logical Thinking Process: An Executive Summary
"The Logical Thinking Process - An Executive Summary" is an executive-level overview of the Logical Thinking Process (LTP) originally developed by E.M. Goldratt. It explains what the LTP is and why it's useful to leaders, managers responsible for decision making at all levels, and interested individuals. This book contains examples of the LTP logic trees and descriptions of some actual applications.
74 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 29, 2018
70 people are currently reading
50 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 7, 2021
This is a summary booklet of his previous book "The Logical Thinking Process". I started reading the original book a few years ago but never finished it. It is quite dense and packed full of ideas. I have started thinking more about the topic of "analysis & decision-making" in recent months so I wanted to pick up where I left off with the logical thinking process. This summary provides a good grasp of the structure of the process without getting into the weeds.
The logical thinking process allows you to externalize and visualize the analysis of a system. This type of analysis is either directed towards strategic planning for a system that does not yet exist, or towards problem-solving within a system. We use the process to answer 4 essential questions:
- Why change? (What's the goal)
- What to change? (Where is the problem and what is the root cause)
- What to change to? (What is the solution)
- How to effect the change? (How can we implement it)
You begin with a goal tree, with the objective at the top and critical success factors branching out under it. The critical success factors (3-5 in his experience) outline the variables or conditions needed for the system to achieve its goal. Under each critical success factor are the necessary conditions to achieve that critical success factor, and you do this recursively for all the necessary conditions (each of which could be goals or critical success factors of sub-systems). Essentially you have deduced a chain of cause-and-effect starting at the bottom most necessary conditions and culminating in the goal at the top. Because we are using deductive thinking to come up with this tree (and other trees in the logical thinking process) it's absolutely critical that we have a good understanding of the system or domain.
The goal tree provides the benchmark for where we want to be. Next we create a problem tree which helps us define what is wrong with the system. Similar to the goal tree we start at the top with the undesirable effect created by the system. Then we deduce the immediate causes of this effect recursively until we arrive at the critical root cause. The critical root cause feeds through various channels in the system to create the undesirable effect(s) of the system. He also outlines a number of logical rules to ensure that the deductive analysis is robust. The author also briefly mentions how the solution tree fits into the Orient section of Boyd's OODA loop which was interesting to me. Hopefully this is discussed more in the original book because I would like to integrate LTP with other decision making frameworks.
With the critical root cause at hand we need to find a solution but with every system there will be reasons why we cannot make changes to the critical root cause. Here he provides us with the conflict resolution diagram. Essentially this contrasts the conflicting assumptions of cause-and-effect and allows us to question where the logic is not sound. By uncovering our faulty assumptions we can come up with an injection that resolves the conflict, and gives us an idea for changing our critical root cause responsible for the undesirable effect.
Then we use the injection to create a solution tree. This is like a cause-and-effect chain that proves that our idea will actually create the end result we want, starting with our idea at the bottom and working our way up to the desired effect. Going through this process also allows us to see what undesirable effects could come out of this new solution by asking what negative side effects can branch out at each step of the cause-and-effect chain.
The last step of the logical thinking process is to create the implementation/deployment tree. Here we map out all the tasks needed to make the injection happen and in what order they need to be executed. This type of tree will be familiar to many people because its the same as those used in project management.
These are five analytical devices wrapped in a process. At an elementary level they are just diagrams and you could argue that many people try to do this process implicitly. When I first started looking into this it all seemed a bit simplistic and this is definitely not foolproof since we rely on our knowledge and experience of how things might behave. But the process is definitely a useful tool.It forces us to uncover our assumptions through externalizing and visualizing the logical arguments, step by step, and discovering the flaw in our thinking. When we try to do all of it in our mind we often skip over a few steps or avoid challenging our assumptions.
I look forward to reading more about this in the coming months and will also try to integrate it with other research and processes on decision making (such as the OODA loop which was already discussed in this booklet.)
The logical thinking process allows you to externalize and visualize the analysis of a system. This type of analysis is either directed towards strategic planning for a system that does not yet exist, or towards problem-solving within a system. We use the process to answer 4 essential questions:
- Why change? (What's the goal)
- What to change? (Where is the problem and what is the root cause)
- What to change to? (What is the solution)
- How to effect the change? (How can we implement it)
You begin with a goal tree, with the objective at the top and critical success factors branching out under it. The critical success factors (3-5 in his experience) outline the variables or conditions needed for the system to achieve its goal. Under each critical success factor are the necessary conditions to achieve that critical success factor, and you do this recursively for all the necessary conditions (each of which could be goals or critical success factors of sub-systems). Essentially you have deduced a chain of cause-and-effect starting at the bottom most necessary conditions and culminating in the goal at the top. Because we are using deductive thinking to come up with this tree (and other trees in the logical thinking process) it's absolutely critical that we have a good understanding of the system or domain.
The goal tree provides the benchmark for where we want to be. Next we create a problem tree which helps us define what is wrong with the system. Similar to the goal tree we start at the top with the undesirable effect created by the system. Then we deduce the immediate causes of this effect recursively until we arrive at the critical root cause. The critical root cause feeds through various channels in the system to create the undesirable effect(s) of the system. He also outlines a number of logical rules to ensure that the deductive analysis is robust. The author also briefly mentions how the solution tree fits into the Orient section of Boyd's OODA loop which was interesting to me. Hopefully this is discussed more in the original book because I would like to integrate LTP with other decision making frameworks.
With the critical root cause at hand we need to find a solution but with every system there will be reasons why we cannot make changes to the critical root cause. Here he provides us with the conflict resolution diagram. Essentially this contrasts the conflicting assumptions of cause-and-effect and allows us to question where the logic is not sound. By uncovering our faulty assumptions we can come up with an injection that resolves the conflict, and gives us an idea for changing our critical root cause responsible for the undesirable effect.
Then we use the injection to create a solution tree. This is like a cause-and-effect chain that proves that our idea will actually create the end result we want, starting with our idea at the bottom and working our way up to the desired effect. Going through this process also allows us to see what undesirable effects could come out of this new solution by asking what negative side effects can branch out at each step of the cause-and-effect chain.
The last step of the logical thinking process is to create the implementation/deployment tree. Here we map out all the tasks needed to make the injection happen and in what order they need to be executed. This type of tree will be familiar to many people because its the same as those used in project management.
These are five analytical devices wrapped in a process. At an elementary level they are just diagrams and you could argue that many people try to do this process implicitly. When I first started looking into this it all seemed a bit simplistic and this is definitely not foolproof since we rely on our knowledge and experience of how things might behave. But the process is definitely a useful tool.It forces us to uncover our assumptions through externalizing and visualizing the logical arguments, step by step, and discovering the flaw in our thinking. When we try to do all of it in our mind we often skip over a few steps or avoid challenging our assumptions.
I look forward to reading more about this in the coming months and will also try to integrate it with other research and processes on decision making (such as the OODA loop which was already discussed in this booklet.)
January 7, 2025
A solid and thorough treatment of the process
Bill Dettmer does a great job so writing an executive summary of The Logical Thinking Process. It is probably the best way to start your journey into the world of Eli Goldratt. Whilst The Goal is an easier read it and perhaps more philosophical it does not contain the full breadth of Goldratt’s later work. this does.
Bill Dettmer does a great job so writing an executive summary of The Logical Thinking Process. It is probably the best way to start your journey into the world of Eli Goldratt. Whilst The Goal is an easier read it and perhaps more philosophical it does not contain the full breadth of Goldratt’s later work. this does.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews