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#009

Breaking Inertia

June 14, 2025 / Read time: 4 minutes

Insights from Rami Goldratt on Driving Change and Breakthroughs

In the business world, stagnation can be a quiet threat, a force that keeps companies doing things the same way even when problems are evident. In his @Podbrand podcast interview, Rami Goldratt, CEO of the Goldratt Group and son of TOC founder Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt, discussed this “inertia” concept extensively within the Theory of Constraints (TOC).

Because we don’t focus on the real business constraints, we often find ourselves incredibly busy but not truly productive. Instead, we stick to known solutions and tactics, expecting different results, which Rami Goldratt highlights because of inertia.

Breaking Inertia: A Leader's Responsibility

“Inertia is this force that drives us to continue and behave in the same way even when we need to change — even when there is a problem.”

While policies and habits born from inertia are necessary for growth and scaling without chaos, there comes a point where the established "book of rules" needs to be challenged.

A crisis is frequently the trigger that forces organizations to break inertia. However, waiting for a crisis is not a good habit. Ideally, we should implement meaningful change before a crisis. We can implement this gradually instead of waiting to be forced into a complete overhaul. Recognizing problems commonly creates fear and uncertainty, which are obstacles to change.

Rami Goldratt emphasizes that challenging and breaking inertia is a prime responsibility of the leader within any system or subsystem. Leaders must determine when it's time for significant change. Sometimes, the best time to break inertia is actually when you are doing very well, as success may provide the assets needed for even greater improvements.

To effectively break inertia, you need to change your point of view and ask different questions. The aim of breaking inertia, particularly in innovation, is to remove a significant limitation in a way that was not possible before.

This involves asking three fundamental questions, central to the TOC way of thinking:

What to change? Identify the constraint, limitation, or core problem that needs to be addressed.

What to change to? Design a solution that not only addresses the problem but also avoids creating new ones.

How to cause the change? This is about implementing the solution effectively, securing buy-in, dealing with resistance, and ensuring collaboration. It's not just "how to change," but "how to cause the change".

When implementing TOC processes to cause change and gain agreement, two key tips stand out:

Address a real, tough problem that inherently motivates people to seek something different. Avoid implementing change solely for the sake of training.
Start smaller with a proof of concept instead of attempting a massive, immediate overhaul. This allows people to witness the positive results and come on board as the change is rolled out more broadly, minimizing resistance.

The Positive Helix of Emotion, Intuition, and Logic

Achieving significant breakthroughs requires exercising three personal powers: emotion, intuition, and logic.

Rami Goldratt describes these as feeding each other in a positive cycle.

Emotion: You must care about the area you wish to improve. Without this emotional investment, you won't have the passion or persistence needed to overcome challenges and failures.

Intuition: Fed by emotion, intuition is the ability to jump to a conclusion or see a solution or core problem even before a complete logical analysis. It's built with experience.

Logic: While intuition offers leaps in understanding, it is often insufficient and can be risky on its own. Logic is necessary to validate intuition, add missing elements, and make necessary course corrections. Intuition feeds logic. Logic without intuition can be merely an academic exercise.

Successfully applying your intuition, guided by logic, in an area you care deeply about leads to significant results. These successes build your emotion and make you even more excited. This creates a virtuous cycle, or "positive helix," where emotion fuels intuition, intuition guides logic, and logic enhances emotion, driving continuous improvement and passion. This concept is further elaborated in Dr. Goldratt's book, The Choice.

For today, that's it. See you next Saturday.

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