The title above can be translated to mean “there will always be problems”. I have always been interested in business and entrepreneurship. As far as I was concerned, business was all about the buying and selling of goods and/or services. Products and services were developed, marketed, distributed and sold. End of story. The activities in between were largely irrelevant. In my opinion, the entrepreneur was the thinker, the risk taker and the problem solver. I also believed that two of the greatest strengths of an entrepreneur were a strong sense of vision and intuition. Seeing the problem and its solution before everyone else and commercializing that solution was all that it took to birth the Microsofts, Apples and Facebooks of this world. Then, in walks Professor B for a session on data analytics, and in a few minutes, all I have ever known is being challenged. While I have always recognized the role of sound decision making in business success, I have never viewed the decision making process as a complex chain of events. To me, there is a problem that either has or does not have a solution. Plain and simple. I was to receive a rude awakening.
Back to Prof. B. He noted that intuition and experience had its place, especially when the manager was knowledgeable about the problem at hand. However, in the absence of prior knowledge, he maintained that it was better to adopt a more scientific approach to problem solving. He spoke to us about the use of quantitative methods in making decisions. He referred to the use of quantitative methods as decision science, management science, business analytics and operations research.
Interestingly, I discovered that these advancements in the application of quantitative methods in decision making began during the second world war. During that time, experts from different fields of study were assembled to solve problems related to war tactics and strategy. This helped the military to solve numerous problems during the war. These experts continued to research into quantitative methods for decision making. With time, these methods began to be used outside of the military for activities like programming. The introduction of computers further improved this approach. This discovery got me thinking. It took a war to improve the decision-making techniques of the world. Could it be true what they say then, that lessons not learned in blood are soon forgotten. Sounds like a topic for another blog post. Hurray!
On reading the recommended text for this course, I came across a definition for problem solving. It reads: Problem solving can be defined as the process of identifying a difference between the actual and the desired state of affairs and then taking action to resolve this difference. The authors outlined the following steps to problem solving:
- Identify and define the problem.
- Determine the set of alternative solutions.
- Determine the criterion or criteria that will be used to evaluate the alternatives.
- Evaluate the alternatives.
- Choose an alternative.
- Implement the selected alternative.
- Evaluate the results to determine whether a satisfactory solution has been obtained.
While problem solving involves all seven steps, decision making on the other hand involves the first five steps outlined. So, decision making ends as soon as an alternative has been selected. All this to solve a problem. It’s not supposed to be that serious. Or is it?
