Resolving a Sweet Dilemma
A baker named Rachel thinks she has two bad options: raise prices and lose customers, or hold prices and lose her business. She has neither. This is how the Evaporating Cloud works.
TL;DR
Most business dilemmas feel like a forced choice between two bad options. Theory of Constraints offers a third path: find the hidden assumption that makes them look like the only options. When that assumption is false — and it often is — the dilemma dissolves. Not a compromise. A dissolution.
Rachel owns a bakery. Her costs are up — flour, butter, labor, everything. She thinks she has two options: raise prices and lose customers to the cheaper grocery store down the street, or hold prices and watch her margins erode until the business fails.
She has neither. Not really.
This is the setup for a short audio drama I produced as part of my Common Sense Systems YouTube series. It is a fictional scenario, but the dilemma Rachel faces is one I have seen in real organizations more times than I can count. The names change. The industry changes. The structure of the trap stays the same.
The Trap
Dilemmas feel real because both sides are real. Rachel genuinely needs healthy margins — without them, the business fails. She genuinely needs loyal customers — without them, there is no business. Both needs are legitimate. Both are necessary. That is what makes the trap feel inescapable.
The trap springs when we connect those needs to specific actions. To restore margins, she must raise prices. To keep customers, she must not raise prices. Raise prices, lose customers. Hold prices, lose the business. Pick your poison.
Most people bounce between these two options for months. They make small compromises. They delay the decision. They pick whichever option feels least bad and live with the consequences.
There is a better path, but it requires asking a different question.
The Question Jonah Asks
In the drama, a mentor figure named Jonah — borrowed from Eli Goldratt’s business novel The Goal — walks Rachel through the problem. Jonah does not offer solutions. He asks questions.
The one that breaks the dilemma open is this: why do you believe that raising your prices will cause you to lose customers?
Rachel’s answer is immediate. People are price-sensitive right now. Everything costs more. She has watched other small businesses raise prices and lose regulars overnight.
Jonah lets that sit for a moment. Then he asks: why do your customers come to you instead of the grocery store? The grocery store is already cheaper than you.
The answer Rachel gives is what changes everything. Her sourdough is something you cannot get anywhere else in town. People drive across the city for it. She does custom cakes — birthday orders, wedding cakes — while the grocery store does sheet cakes with frosting from a bucket. She knows her regulars by name. Mrs. Patterson comes in every Saturday and Rachel has her order ready before she walks through the door.
Jonah’s observation is quiet: your customers are not choosing you because of your prices.
Rachel hears it. A long pause in the recording. Then: huh.
The Hidden Assumption
What Jonah has done is expose the assumption underneath the dilemma.
Rachel believed that raising prices would cost her customers because she assumed her customers chose her on price. But that is not what she just described. Her customers choose her for things the grocery store cannot offer — quality, craft, a personal relationship built over years. The grocery store is already cheaper. Her customers already know that and come to her anyway.
The assumption that connected “raise prices” to “lose customers” was simply not true.
This is the core move in what Goldratt called the Evaporating Cloud. The tool works like this: you state the dilemma clearly — two needs that both serve a common goal, and two actions that directly conflict. Then you find the assumptions hiding underneath each side. You test whether those assumptions are actually true. When you find one that is not, the dilemma dissolves.
Not a compromise, where both sides lose something. A dissolution — where you discover the conflict was never as real as it looked.
What Comes Next
Once Rachel sees that the assumption is false, the question shifts. Instead of asking which bad option to choose, she starts asking a more useful question: what could she offer that her customers value so much they would happily pay more?
That is a completely different problem. And she already has ideas.
The method has three steps. State the dilemma clearly. Find the assumptions connecting the needs to the conflicting actions. Test whether those assumptions are actually true.
Most of the time, the assumption that holds the dilemma in place is something that feels obvious — so obvious that it never gets examined. People are price-sensitive. Of course they are. But price-sensitive in general is not the same as price-sensitive about this specific thing from this specific person for this specific reason. The assumption felt universal. It was not.
A Note on the Episode
This post accompanies Episode 03 of the Common Sense Systems YouTube series, “Resolving a Sweet Dilemma.” The episode is a short audio drama — about seven minutes — featuring Jonah and Rachel working through the problem in real time. The script and audio were produced using the same AI-assisted pipeline I have described in earlier posts. If you want to hear the method in action rather than read about it, that is the place to start.
Goldratt’s novel The Goal, where the character of Jonah first appears, is one of the best-selling business books of all time. If you have not read it, I recommend it without reservation.
If you find yourself caught in a dilemma that has been going nowhere for months, I am happy to take a look. Sometimes an outside pair of eyes is all it takes to see the assumption that has been holding the trap in place.
You can reach me at john@common-sense.com.