About this Presentation
In My 90-Day Human Transformation Project, Dr. Lisa Ferguson explores how Theory of Constraints thinking can be applied beyond organizations and into personal transformation. Drawing on her long history with TOC and her work with Dr. Eli Goldratt, Lisa connects the Five Focusing Steps, Thinking Processes, Strategy & Tactic Trees, the Four Viewpoints of Change, the Lieutenant’s Cloud, Critical Chain Project Management, and the Standing on the Shoulders of Giants process into a broader approach to personal goal achievement.
Using her own life as the case, Lisa examines a core conflict between meeting the needs of others and protecting her own health and personal satisfaction. She then applies TOC logic to the idea of human health as a system, considering physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions as interconnected parts of the whole. The session is personal and exploratory, showing how familiar TOC concepts can be used to examine assumptions, conflicts, goals, and change at the individual level.
What Will You Learn
To help you get the most value from this session, we’ve highlighted a few key points. These takeaways capture the main ideas and practical insights from the presentation, making it easier for you to review, reflect, and apply what you’ve learned.
Lisa Ferguson applies TOC thinking to a deeply personal transformation challenge. She frames her work around the same core questions TOC uses in organizations: what is the goal, what is preventing progress, what conflict is sustaining the current reality, and what changes are necessary to move toward a better future.
The session connects several TOC tools rather than relying on one method alone. Lisa brings together the Five Focusing Steps, Strategy & Tactic Trees, the Thinking Processes, the Four Viewpoints of Change, the Lieutenant’s Cloud, Critical Chain Project Management, and Standing on the Shoulders of Giants as pieces of a broader framework for goal achievement and transformation.
Lisa identifies a personal core conflict between maximizing the satisfaction and security of others and achieving her own health and personal satisfaction. The conflict is expressed as adhering to versus not adhering to her “unrelenting standards,” with the common objective of living a meaningful life.
She extends the Standing on the Shoulders of Giants process beyond traditional organizational applications. Lisa uses it to explore human health as a system, with physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions, asking how assumptions about health and transformation might be challenged through TOC logic.
Instructor(s)
Dr. Lisa Anne Ferguson
Dr. Lisa Ferguson's goal in life is to illuminate the way to utopia for individuals, organizations, and the rest of society. Our strategies and tactics are based on using the Theory of Constraints (TOC), combined with other best practices to dramatically improve strategic planning and execution, retail, education, healthcare and the health/happiness/success of individuals with a holistic approach. TOC was founded by Dr. Eli Goldratt to achieve his goal in life of teaching the world to think. For a decade, Dr. Ferguson was a full-time professor of operations management before resigning to teach for The Goldratt Group full-time training consultants (both TOC experts and Supply Chain Logistics implementers). Next, Dr. Lisa Ferguson spent a year (2007 – 2008) working as the apprentice to best-selling author and business guru, Eliyahu M. Goldratt as he trained her to become an even more successful writer and speaker, while further developing her TOC expertise. Her service on the TOCICO Board of Directors in an elected, unpaid position is from 2008 – 2011 and 2020 – 2021. Professor Ferguson is the author of the chapter on Strategy and Tactic Trees in The Theory of Constraints Handbook. Dr. Ferguson began teaching online classes for Illuminutopia in 2010. She is a published author (as well as an editor) and consultant with experience guiding Fortune 100 companies down through small businesses.