Once we have a collective understanding as an organization of an OLC, then we can define and discuss the components of an OLC.


Critical Task Management is founded on the idea that within every attainable objective or mission lies a series of tasks much like the tracks of a railroad, which ultimately lead to a destination or purpose. Along these tracks lie several “critical tasks” that must be completed before the mission can continue to the next “critical task”. Ideally, once all the CT’s have been completed, the objective or destination is then complete. 



A clear way to define the CTM hierarchy is through an example of a realtor selling a house. Although the goal of the realtor is to sell many homes, each listing would be considered the beginning of one Opportunity Life Cycle.

The realtor may sell 50 homes in a year, which would be defined as achieving 50 Opportunity Life Cycles.



Each OLC may be 12 critical task or even a 100. It simply depends on how the realtor defines his or her business. For this purpse, we will assume the realtor has 6 Critical Tasks (CTs), which are:



_CT1-Customer Contacts Realtor to Sell Home-This would be the start of the OLC and the point at which it is now "on track". From this point on, the OLC is either going to be achieved or terminated, and along the way it may or may not come "off track".



   _CT2-Realtor Agrees to Sell Home


   _CT3-Realtor Finds Buyer


   _CT4-Buyer Agrees to Buy Home


   _CT5-Title Company Closes Loan


   _CT6-Realtor is paid for services



Again we stress the word "opportunity" because re-defining the language used throughout the corporate culture emphasizes the fact that although this OLC may not be completed, perhaps somewhere along the tracks we may encounter a situation that allows us to improve our services and generate a better way of completing OLC's in the future. This is what we call extra genetic intelligence, or a process learned that provides a solution for future problems. With the use of CTMSoftware, this recorded solution provides us a chance to contribute to the "Organizational Brain", which ultimately brings our organization to life, by allowing us to duplicate our knowledge and pass it on.



The idea is that every single task is either completed or not completed and the result of that task is either positive or negative to the opportunity. Once a task becomes a risk to the OLC, it is considered “off track”. The purpose of identifying an “off track” task is to find an immediate solution for getting the object “on track”. If attempts have failed to get the object “on track”, the object is then terminated.



In our example, we may go "off track" due to the fact the buyer does not qualify for a loan to purchase the house. A successful realtor, who has witnessed this in the past will most likely have a solution to get the OLC back "on track" based on his or her prior experience. The goal obviously is to keep as many opportunities “on track” as possible, and identify as many “off track” objects as soon as possible.