2026-07-30-outline-for-intro-narrative - Issue Trees & Logical Thinking Process

What Counts is current section on site for this. We want to update it probably.

Appendix: outflow 2026-07-30

Here we are discussing the purpose of this section and what it should be for.

My second point is: what is the purpose of what we're calling What Counts?

What I'm going to put forward—not as the truth, but as a hypothesis—is that we want something like a New York Times visual article. You know those long, scrollable pieces. The purpose is to explain why you want these kinds of trees and what they're for.

We don't even need to mention the term Logical Thinking Process until the end. Instead we begin at the conceptual level:

What's the problem?
Why do you need this kind of solution?
Why did people develop these methods in the first place?

What Counts is almost a New York Times version of Goldratt's work. It doesn't need to reinvent the wheel, but it should make the core ideas genuinely accessible.

At the end of that article—or perhaps woven into it—we include a demonstration. Not a software demo, but something like the claim-sheet annotation demo: "Here's what this looks like in practice."

So I see What Counts less as documenting our own work and more as answering a universal question:

Whether you're running a business, a team, or any complex project, here's the problem you face, and here's a fundamentally different way of thinking about it.

One thing that came up last time was that people seemed genuinely mind-blown by this method.

I think that's because the Theory of Constraints is fundamentally counterintuitive.

The presentation should exploit that surprise. We begin by eliciting the audience's own prediction:

"How would you solve this problem?"

Then we show why the intuitive answer is actually wrong.

In predictive processing terms, you first generate a prediction, then violate it.

In many ways Goldratt already solved this communication problem.

The Goal introduces the Theory of Constraints through story, and then books like It's Not Luck introduce the Logical Thinking Process.

Today we can communicate the same ideas using animation, visual storytelling, and interactive graphics.

You could almost structure the page like a Logical Thinking Process itself:

Start with a goal.
Show the obstacle.
Reveal the underlying conflict.
Present the solution.
Show implementation.

Whether people consciously notice that structure doesn't really matter. What matters is that we're introducing the Theory of Constraints, then leading naturally into the Logical Thinking Process in a highly accessible way.

The core story might begin with something very ordinary.

Imagine you're running a department at a bank.

What's the way to maximise output?

Is it for everybody to work as hard as possible?

Most people immediately answer yes.

But that's wrong.

The goal is to optimise the system, not optimise every individual.

Then comes the surprising question:

If everyone is already working as efficiently as possible, does that mean the system is efficient?

Again, the intuitive answer is yes.

Again, it's wrong.

Optimising a system is not the same thing as optimising all of its parts.

One example that really made this click for me was talking with someone at Datopian who was responsible for marketing.

Think about a marketing funnel.

Different people work on different stages:

awareness,
conversion,
loyalty.

I pointed out that if we're trying to optimise all of those equally, then we already know we're operating inefficiently.

Why?

Because at any moment there is only one real constraint.

Maybe thousands of people are visiting the website, but very few are signing up.

If that's true, then getting even more visitors is almost irrelevant.

The constraint isn't traffic.

The constraint is conversion.

So putting effort into awareness is actually wasteful until you've addressed the bottleneck.

That was the moment I could almost see the light switch on.

System thinking is fundamentally different from linear thinking.

To optimise a system, you do not optimise every component equally.

You identify the biggest constraint and focus almost all your energy there.

When that constraint is removed, another one becomes limiting, and then you move to that.

That's the Theory of Constraints.

You can apply it to almost anything—a business, a team, even looking after your dad.

The first question is always:

What is actually constraining the system right now?

This is why Goldratt's work is so powerful.

He constantly sets up the reader's intuition and then overturns it.

In The Goal, the factory manager sees workers sitting around reading newspapers and gets angry.

His instinct is:

"Everybody should be working."

But the surprising result is exactly the opposite.

If every machine and every worker is busy all the time, the factory becomes less efficient.

An efficient factory actually requires idle time in non-bottleneck resources.

There's no point producing more inventory if it simply piles up waiting for the real bottleneck.

That's deeply counterintuitive.

Most people think:

"Everybody, get to work! We've got lots to do."

The Theory of Constraints says:

No. Find the bottleneck, and organise the whole system around it.

That's the "aha" moment we need to communicate.

The challenge is taking this fairly sophisticated systems idea and making it immediately intuitive.

I think that's exactly what a New York Times-style visual article can do: a largely visual, scrollable story that guides people through the intuition until the idea suddenly clicks.