One of the 3 books Jeff Bezos requires all executives at Amazon to read. Also the most painstakingly boring book I've finished in a long time (only finished because I was reading it with a friend).
The book attempts to explain Eliyahu Goldratt's Theory of Constraints philosophy through the fictional story of Alex Rogo, the operator of a failing factory who has three months to turn his business around.
The philosophy itself, which teaches the importance of operational excellence and focusing on bottlenecks, is critical and deeply insightful.
However, the narrative is dragged out far longer than it needs to be, with an irrelevant side plot about the factory owners failing marriage, and every sentence of insight taking several chapters of predictable dialogue to be revealed. All the useful information in the book could be condensed into less than a page, and the stories don't contribute enough effective intuition building to justify their length.