The FOCCCUS Formula is eliyahu-goldratt's Five Focusing Steps repackaged for general audiences — Ching's most significant act of translation work. Where Goldratt's original steps use abstract operational vocabulary, FOCCCUS uses plain verbs that make the process immediately actionable for managers and teams unfamiliar with TOC.
The Formula
F — Find the bottleneck (look for queues building up, work stalling, people waiting) O — Optimize the bottleneck (make it work at maximum capacity; don't waste a single unit of the constraint's time) C — Coordinate everything to the bottleneck (align all upstream and downstream work to serve it) C — Collaborate across the system (get non-bottleneck resources to actively support the constraint) C — Curate the work flowing through the bottleneck (prioritize ruthlessly to maximize value through the constraint) U — Upgrade the constraint (if optimizing isn't enough, invest in increasing the constraint's capacity) S — Start again strategically (if the bottleneck shifts, don't let inertia prevent you from restarting the process)
The expansion from five steps to a six-or-seven-step acronym reflects practical experience: Goldratt's "Subordinate" step — align everything else to the constraint — is too abstract for most teams. Splitting it into Coordinate (process and system alignment) and Collaborate (people and behavior alignment) makes it actionable.
Mapping to Goldratt's Original Steps
| FOCCCUS | Goldratt's Step | |---|---| | Find | Identify the constraint | | Optimize | Exploit the constraint | | Coordinate + Collaborate | Subordinate everything else | | Curate | Elevate the constraint | | Start again | Repeat (don't let inertia become the constraint) |
The "don't let inertia become the constraint" caveat is Goldratt's own addition to step five — Ching preserves and emphasizes it because it addresses a common failure mode: organizations successfully move the bottleneck but then keep optimizing the old one out of habit.
Significance
FOCCCUS is the conceptual backbone of the-bottleneck-rules and also features prominently in the-bottleneck-detective. It represents Ching's core intellectual contribution: not new theory, but accessibility. By making bottleneck-thinking approachable without an operations-research background, Ching extends Goldratt's reach into software teams and knowledge work organizations that would never read "The Goal."
The formula connects directly to toc-for-software-development — the "Find" step in particular requires the specialized skill of constraint-identification-in-knowledge-work, since knowledge-work bottlenecks don't queue visibly the way manufacturing WIP does.