"The Goal" by Eliyahu Goldratt

This book was an included reading for one of my courses at Queen's School of Business, but I never got around to read it until a colleague from work recommended it. It is written as a novel.  Mind you, it would fail as a novel, as it is not very well written (literary-wise), but when judged as a business book - it is amazing!

The TOC, or Theory of Constraints, was the original business process re-engineering framework, way before Six Sigma, Lean, or even Systems Theory came about.  It is based on the Socratic Method of asking questions until you put your finger on the possible problem.  TOC is based on discovering bottlenecks in the production process and re-organizing the entire production line in order to service the bottlenecks.  This would be fine and dandy if new bottlenecks didn't just start appearing after you've taken care of the first one, which is why this solution framework is sometimes called "Continuous Improvement." 

The main protagonist of the novel is a plant manager who has a tough task to turn around a losing factory, but who also is fighting a personal battle, his wife threatening to leave him.  We follow his struggles, both at work and at home, which are mainly unsuccessful until he runs into his old Physics professor, Jonah, who's now a high-powered business consultant and who teaches him TOC which is based on the Scientific Method and the Socratic Inquiry.

This is Mr. Goldratt's first book and he went on to write another half dozen others and form a worldwide consultancy based around these ideas.  The funny thing about taking a course with Mr. Goldratt's consultancy is that the tuition runs about $20,000 or more, since he believes that people do not appreciate what they get for cheap or free.

This book is an amazing primer of how common sense (which is not common at all) can be used as a basis to untangle the most complicated business problems.