Here’s an astonishing quote from Frank Patrick. He asserts that the TOC thinking processes are based on the tenet that:

“in any system that is brought together for a purpose, there is no such thing as real conflict, but only unexamined assumptions”

This sentence stopped me in my tracks. And after a moment’s thought I realised how true it is…

The word conflict is perhaps a jargon term in the TOC world, and refers to any situation in which one is faced with a choice between mutually exclusive options. As Frank puts it earlier in the same article:

“any problem can be stated in terms of a conflict or conflicts between what are perceived to be necessary conditions”

So the TOC thinking processes begin by reminding us that we are in this dilemma because we’ve made a load of assumptions. And because “in nature there are no conflicts”, somewhere at least one of those assumptions must be invalid.