Comments for TOC applied to law firms

Comment from dgrey on 2006-03-05

2006-03-05T22:17:44Z

Hard to see how TOC applies when the constraint is application of tacit knowledge. Difficult to manage insight, innovation, awareness, relationships.....

So I'm not sure if TOC does always apply equally well to professional services. Have I missed the point?

Comment from ski on 2006-03-05

2006-03-05T22:47:41Z

the same was thought before TOC's Critical Chain
Project Management methodology reinvented the
world of projects.

TOC is a focusing tool. if your industry requires
focus, constraints management will help.

there are also numerous documented cases of TOC
used in service oriented businesses.

but true, it takes a lot of hard work to apply
the simple yet profound thinking processes.

-ski

Comment from Dave Swanner on 2006-03-07

2006-03-08T02:29:36Z

dgrey,
I think you're right, it's hard to apply TOC to tacit knowledge. The point is to make the knowledge less silent.

I think you can apply TOC to a professional services firm, but it is much more firm and industry specific as opposed to being able to set some basic ground rules as in manufacturing, retailing and those industries.

For example, I am a sole practitioner with 5 full employees (2 paralegals, 1 secretary, 1 part time paralegal, 1 part time law clerk) and a number of outside vendors that assist with work, such as private investigators to track down information and legal nurse consultants to provide medical summaries and determine future medical care costs.

The issue is to define the process and find the constraints. One of our constraints was summarizing medical records. Determining the highpoints and problem areas in the client's medical treatment. It's something we could do easily inhouse, but it was a constraint so when we need to, we outsource to a legal nurse consultant.

Another constraint is the attorney. The more the processes can be defined and the less that has to flow through the attorney, the more the constraint can be widened. In my mind, that consists of the attorney defining beforehand the possible results and the actions taken with each one.

In my line of work, there are only so many possible problems and so many possible actions. The more process driven you can make it, the less of a constraint the lawyer becomes.

You stated "Difficult to manage insight, innovation, awareness, relationships....." I believe you're spot on correct on that. However, you can use TOC to take the other responsibilities off the lawyer so that what they are doing involves the insight, innovation, awareness, relationships and the like.

Just my thoughts.

Comment from jackvinson on 2006-03-09

2006-03-09T14:40:30Z

Dave has the right sense of it. You can't really manage a constraint that isn't explicit. However, if you can figure out how stuff (materials, information, knowledge, people) flows through your system, and find the places where it is getting slowed down or "bottled up," you have a start at being able to think about the process in terms of TOC.

The conceptual struggle that people have is that there really is only one constraint. It frequently looks like there are many constraints or maybe the constraint moves around because of the way we operate and manage the business. In the case of manufacturing, you might see slow points move around the line as a work cell receives a big load of work. But at other times those same work cells are idle or processing much less work. Similarly, in Dave's law firm, their in-house medical records person gets overwhelmed on occasion, so they farm it out from time to time.

For Dave, I ask what is the one area that should control the flow of work through the entire organization?