Book Reviews

It's Not Luck

By Eliayahu Goldratt

Reviewed by Steve Buchwald, CIRM

This review is of the book "It's Not Luck", and the play by the same name that Eli is using to present his ideas.

The play was a provacative approach to Eli Goldratt's thought process. Eli once said that "The Goal" was a big failure for him because he did not leave the reader with the thought process necessary to solve problems or resove conflict on his own. This is just what Eli tries to do with this play. In his own words, "I want to teach you not only how to construct but also how to communicate common sense". The evening was interesting as this is a new presentation style for business applications. Nonetheless, due to time constraints, the prsentation becomes a good long playing commercial for the book and for Eli's institute.

On the other hand, the book itself is better developed. It is written in the novelistic style that made the "Goal" so famous. Although the novelistic writting is not as well executed as in the "Goal," how many times can one person write a book a well done as the "Goal," the writting is very good and the book reads easily and quickly. I would recomend this book as it will certainly expose you to the basic steps in applying the scientific method to solving business problems. However, if Eli's goal, no pun intended, is to leave the reader with the complete thought process for problem solving and confict resolution, he has still come up short. Not that he doesn't bring up all the parts of the process, because he does do that, but because the way he brings them up is somewhat scattered and nowhere is the reader given a fully outlined step by step "how to" approach for using this process.

For me the book is again a long playing commercial for Eli's institution. I find that the problems Eli's characters are dealing with have the outcomes already defined by the author. And even though the characters make mistakes from time to time it is fairly easy for them to get to their final destinations. I am better prepared to deal with problem solving and conflict resolution as a result of reading this book but I'm still sceptical about how full proof these techniques will be when the assumptions made are prone to error and the outcomes sought have not been so neatly predefined.

Good reading!