Our Story

The story of the making of TLT and its ongoing life as an organization and its product is an organic one that cannot be captured easily in a short essay. I have chosen to include an image of an acryllic painting that I painted, "Tree of Life" as a way of hinting at the complex reality of the process of innovation and entrepreneurship behind this website. Here's the sketch of our story.

A really good book, it turns out, can really shake things up! That was the case with the book "The Goal, "a business novel you may well have read that intertwines two stories: The first is that of a plant manager's struggle to turn around a failing manufacturing plant in only a few months. The second tells how the plant manager is having to rethink his approach to marriage and how he will save his. This book has since sold well over two million copies and has helped myriad companies to better understand their goal, how to manage in line with the goal, and operational principles for achieving it.

That book influenced me as well, tying together ideas and presenting them in a novel way. I used it in teaching my business school classes at the undergraduate, MBA, and Executive MBA levels. Before long, an undergraduate student introduced me to her father, Richard Putz, who knew a lot about the larger Theory of Constraints (T.O.C.), "The Goal" being the tip of the T.O.C. iceberg. I also met the main character portrayed in "The Goal" and started learning more about the larger body of ideas, work, and people of T.O.C. With Richard's help, I learned the Thinking Processes that are the foundation of T.O.C. We co-taught some undergraduate courses on operations management and the Thinking Processes. I subsequently offered M.B.A. courses on it and introduced elements of the approach in my Executive MBA classes.

In my experience, students attempted to implement their work with hand-drawn diagrams or in PowerPoint, Word, or Visio with varying degrees of success and frustration. I felt that my students would greatly benefit from “drawing” software tailored to the tree diagrams of TOC. Many TOC practitioners have told me that this very thought has occurred to them as well.

A fellow professor had teamed up with a fantastic programmer to create database design software. When I started telling him about what I needed for TOC, our voices grew louder with excitement. Very soon, we saw that with the strong support of our partner the software wizard, we could make the dream a reality. It's taken far more effort than I could have foreseen, but I am gratified that we (two professors and a programmer supported by multiple friends and employees for specific components) can now share with you the software we created for TOC.

I believe this software will make it much easier for groups to work together practicing the Thinking Processes. Moreover, TLT will help professionals and students to learn it, and for teachers, critics, and coaches to give feedback electronically. We ave chosen to call our software Transformation LogicTree as a way to show that it is rooted in the logic diagrams called "trees" and that its purpose is to advance transformation both for organizations and individuals. TLT was built for Windows XP and Vista. We believe it will be very valuable to anyone who is seriously building trees (or other diagrams such as flowcharts or fishbone diagrams). Say goodbye to off-page connectors - TLT is perfect for developing and presenting large diagrams (e.g., 3 pages wide by 8 pages high and can easily be expanded or shrunk as the tree develops). It prints well (WYSIWYG), generating large posters by tiling standard size sheets. TLT automatically generates a Glossary WorkSheet that lists all entity contents (including the story field that provides additional information surrounding an entity)on any WorkSheet in the WorkBook. In addition to standard copy/paste editing, TLT has “linked” entities that maintain consistent content while appearing on multiple trees. Edit one and you have edited all linked entities. TLT’s novel “Document Explorer” has powerful search/find and “jump-to” capabilities that you’ll love. TLT graphics can easily be pasted into Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc. to be integrated into reports.

I hope you will try out our TLT software, and I recommend you begin by quickly skimming through the tutorials and reading the FAQ sheet to get a sense of TLT. Our goal is to keep TLT inexpensive to support professionals and students from around the globe in learning and practicing the Thinking Processes and to advance its use in industry. Our small business has invested our creativity, brainpower, expertise, money, and time; however, we also acknowledge the helpful teaching, feedback, and ideas from leading T.O.C. professionals such as Richard Putz, Dr. James Holt, William Dettmer, and of course Eliyahu Goldratt himself.

Enjoy the ease and freedom of the Thinking Processes with TLT!

Mark Van Oyen, Ph.D., Jonah's Jonah
President, Transformation LogicTree, Inc.