Let me pause and see where I am:
- I said I don’t classify all statements labelled as principles as principles – to not offend, I use the term Fundamental Principles.
- I defined Goldratt’s method of standing on the shoulder of giants.
- I chose Dr Covey’s work on principles as the true controlling aspects of human effectiveness as a study for standing on the shoulder of giants.
- I showed that I looked in depth at Dr Covey’s work – and others.
Now, I need to explain the missing piece before I share my list of fundamental principles.
The definition of principle I use is:
Fundamental principles express what people are or have and serve as the foundation for a chain of reasoning to support human effectiveness.
Andreas A Landman
The missing piece, is the “chain of reasoning”.
Dr Eli Goldratt, Dr Lisa Scheinkopf, and Jelena Fedurko Cohen espoused the foundation of the chain of reasoning through the thinking processes. Entities are related to each other by sufficiency or necessity logic.
In building the chain of reasoning to support human effectiveness, I rely on sufficiency logic. Sufficiency logic is expressed by If A and B then C type sentences.
I will not go into how to use the sufficiency logic. Rest assured I poured over the list of principles and looked for the links and found many links. All in the hope of finding the bottom principles – the fundamental principles.
In the process of building the chain of reasoning, I weeded out many so-called principles and false connections, or connections that need a longer explanation. The way of doing that is called applying the categories of legitimate reservation.
The categories of legitimate reservation strengthen the logic by giving it a process.
- Does the cause or effect really exist?
- Does the cause really result in the effect?
- Are the cause and result different, or the same but with different words?
- Does the cause exist? This can be proven by showing that another effect does exist as well.
- Is the cause sufficient to result in the effect on its own?
- Is there another cause that will also result in the effect?
- Is the cause, effect or connection clearly expressed?
So, there you have it. Standing on the shoulder of giants with new methods allows me to make bold statements . . .
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