Tools for a perfect job

I was taking care of my own business, when all of a sudden I had an hour to spare. A full hour of no appointments. What a joy. So why not stop at the new barber shop around the corner, and see if they had a time slot? My hair needed some serious fixing, so off we go.

At the door, I could see it was quite a bit empty, something really unusual for the holidays, but in no time a very polite shop manager came to greet me, and set me up with the barber. Sitting at the chair, I could not help to notice the open suitcase, in which most of his tools were neatly organized and displayed. Just by looking it, one could see the pride this professional had in his tools. And of course, in his profession. You see, it is quite a shock for me when people from different professions do not value and take care of their tools. It also kills me when I see a person picking a pointy knife to unscrew a Philips screw.

"Man is a tool-using animal".

Be it in medicine or engineering, we are as good as our tools. So when it comes to Business management, it is something I take great pride on, to showcase the tools I am proficient with. I also think we should talk more about them. You see, there is a reason why some tools became so famous, why there are books about them, and classes in Universities. It's because they make our work easier, get better results, have more predictable outcomes and we can repeat and improve from one implementation to the other. Many of them were used in the storytelling book called "A corda" (The rope, in Portuguese) about Turnaround Management, that I published in 2017. My favorites are:

1. The Theory of Constraints, TOC, by Eli Goldratt.
2. The blue ocean strategy, by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.
3. The Ishikawa diagram for root-cause analysys, by Kaoru Ishikawa († 1968).
4. Business Model Canvas, described in the Business Model Generation book by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur.

We should always make a point of explaining to our customers where do they come from, why are the tools so important, where it can be applied and when, etc.

So, what are your favorite tools?