TACTics Journal

A Publication for and by TOC for Education Practitioners

September 6, 2002

In this week’s issue:

Connections

(1) “A Goal Is A Dream Taken Seriously,” Kathy Suerken

(2) A Week to Remember for the “A Goal” Academy, Jonathon Holder

(3) The Moral Code of TOC for Education

Editors’ Notes

(4) Kay Buckner-Seal, Cheryl A. Edwards

CONNECTIONS

(1) "A GOAL Is A Dream Taken Seriously"

From Kathy Suerken

It has become obvious that the future leaders of TOC for Education are

beginning to emerge. I refer to those young people whose actions reflect a

belief that TOC is a means to achieve something meaningful for themselves

and the world …now and in the future.

We in TOCFE need to provide "learning to lead "opportunities for these

children in such a way that the collaborative synergy among them can

develop. Therefore, we launched the Avraham Goldratt "Opportunities as

Leaders" (A GOAL) Academy in July 2002 at our 6th International

Conference. This education program is established in the memory of Eli

Goldratt's father and, as such, is grounded in the TOC For Education moral

code in both practice and spirit. (See article #3 in this week’s TACTics)

This moral code is very much modeled by the children who participated in

this inaugural class: Cristy Garza (Mexico), Jonathon Holder (United

Kingdom), Ariff Salahi Amiruddin (Malaysia), Arturo Garza (Mexico), and Ana

Maria Conde (Venezuela). Conference participants watched these children

begin their association with several daunting obstacles: different cultural

backgrounds, different “first” languages, and the pressure of writing,

producing and presenting a TOC play to 125 adults within an all but

impossible deadline—48 hours! The extraordinary play they created is evidence

of what can happen when there is a cohesive team united by a

common goal. The children attribute their success to the use of the TOC

tools. Guiding them was a leader, Francois Moll (Republic of South Africa),

who teaches TOC by example.

In other words, he uses TOC to empower his students to take responsibility

for their own learning and behaviors. As we know, the tools enable us to

take responsibility not only for addressing behavioral mistakes but also for

bringing BIG dreams into reality. As the goal of a successful play was

replaced by a much higher goal, the Academy students once more

collaborated on a TOC plan —an Ambitious Target tree.

And now they are taking actions to follow through as evidenced by

Jonathon's report. He is 13 years old and has assumed the responsibility of

helping the Academy overcome communication problems and, as part of that,

has taken on the task of being a spokesperson.

The Academy students have verbalized their goal as an Ambitious Target

that reads: "We have an Academy that is a group of people of ages 11-20

that learn the TOC thinking tools in order to help them in their future and

back in their community." If you want to see an example of a dream taken

seriously, go to www.tocforeducation.com. Click on “learning options” and

then on “files” where you will find their work.

(2) A Week to Remember for the “A Goal” Academy

The first class of "A GOAL" (Avraham Goldratt 'Opportunities as Leaders')

Academy met for the first time at the Nottingham TOCFE conference on

Sunday 7 th July. We stayed within the campus of the University of

Nottingham, beautiful surroundings for an excellent conference. The

accommodation was a brisk ten minutes walk away from the conference

facilities, if you managed to follow the (confusing) signposts. There were

five children (Anna Maria, Ariff, Arturo, Cristina and Jonathon) and one

producer (Francois). For four of the children and for Francois English was

not their first language, but it was the only language which everyone had in

common-apart from TOC.

We were all there to create a play to show the TOC tools. It was Sunday

night and we would perform the play (in front of the entire conference) on

Wednesday afternoon. “Impossible! Ridiculous!” I hear you cry. Well

that’s what we said as well, but we had the tools, the determination, and we

were led by a man with a mission. Despite finding more than forty obstacles

we managed to script and rehearse the play by the end of Wednesday

lunchtime.

And then came the performance. We had just finished our first run

through. We had twenty minutes before the performance, and so we were

all in a hurry to get back and get changed. I ran back with the hope of

managing to get something to eat as well. When I arrived at my room, I

discovered I hadn’t got my keys. I ran back to the conference room, and

picked up what I thought were my keys from the table. I ran back as fast as

I could, and in my haste got lost on the way. When I reached my room, I

discovered that I had Francois’ keys, so again I ran back. “Have I got time to

go and get changed now?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter.”

And so then came the performance.

The hot stage lights beat down on us. The whole audience hushed and stared

right through us. You would have heard a pin drop. We survived the weight

of each scene, and at the end the applause was deafening…

We had created a play in two and a half days, but we still didn’t have a goal.

So we couldn’t relax and have a rest! We could not decide on whether we

should set a very ambitious goal or a more realistic one. In the end we set a

practical goal working towards a more ambitious one.

On Friday morning we traveled to the Directors’ Conference at Ashridge.

We were housed in a beautiful medieval castle, with state of the art

technology! We didn’t have much time to admire the surroundings…

When we arrived we got straight to work on the obstacles and IOs.

Altogether there were 86! Rami helped us rephrase and clarify some of

them, and then we typed them up. Cristina and I were up till 12.40 sticking

post-its onto the IO map.

The next day we showed the others the map, and then we went off to

Whipsnade Zoo. We looked at all the animals, went round in a bus, and heard

some very interesting animal talks. We had to come back at three to do

more work. We assigned tasks and after supper we presented our obstacles,

IOs, cloud about what our goal was, and IO map. At the end of the day we went home

to get on with it.

This is the first of my many tasks as spokesperson completed. Thank you Eli

for giving us the opportunity to make a difference, and for lighting up the

world for so many people. Thank you Kathy for supporting us and having

faith in children. Thank you very much Francois for the application of the

branch tool which I used to write this article (and thank you Mum for being

smart enough to think of using TOC to write about the TOC academy.

Jonathon Holder

A GOAL Academy Spokesperson

(3) The Moral Code of TOC for Education

The Moral Code can be found under the “Foundation” key at the TOC for Education Web site:

tocforeducation.com.

The TOC tools were created to find and implement win-win solutions in which

no one is hurt through our actions. As we strive toward the goal to bring

significant improvement to education, the people of TOC for Education will

use the TOC tools in the spirit in which they are intended.

EDITORS’ NOTES

(4) Kay Buckner-Seal, Cheryl A. Edwards

Feel free to share with us. Send your responses, applications of the thinking

processes, lessons, announcements, and etc. by mail to: Cheryl A. Edwards,

2253 S. Hill Island Rd., Cedarville, Michigan 49719, USA. Or send hyperlink

to cedwards@cedarville.net or bucknek@earthlink.net.

To view TACTics in its intended formatting, visit our web site at

www.tocforeducation.com and click on “What’s New.”