Affiliations: [a] Terry College of Business, University ofGeorgia, Athens, GA, USA
| [b] Freedom High School, Morganton, NC, USA
Correspondence:
[*]
Corresponding author: James F. Cox III, 142 Chesterfield Rd. Bogart, GA 30602, USA. Tel.: +1 706 540 1963; E-mail: jcox@uga.edu.
Abstract: A wise person learns from others’ mistakes. Mistakes are common even though most are preventable! Serious mistakes occur in business, government, and even in personal lives. Frequently mistakes are caused by not recognizing the situation, environment or system (referred to as system hereafter). The tendency is to hide or dismiss mistakes. That in itself is a mistake! Many times, by examining system causalities, actions can be planned and taken to either prevent the mistake or to reduce its impact. Two types of common mistakes to thinking clearly (defined as recognizing the system causalities) are identified and studied: 1.the proposed action does not solve the system problem; 2. the proposed action solves the system problem but causes some unintended serious negative consequences. Eliyahu M. Goldratt developed the theory of constraints (TOC) thinking processes (TP) to apply the scientific method to solving business problems. Rather than select a personal or business problem, since science is based on causality within reality, three major scientific activities, inference (type 1 mistake), observation (type 2 mistake), and prediction (types 1 and 2 mistake prevention) are used to provide a tutorial on the TP and its use in addressing these types of mistakes.
Keywords: Causality, thinking processes, theory of constraints, mistake proofing, Goldratt, scientific method
