Critical Thinking for Problem Solving and Decision Making文档.pptVIP

* * A Crystal Ball. Some problems, such as a schedule, are a prediction of the future, and therefore cannot be known until that future occurs (unless you have crystal ball). Triangular Thinking is a way to create that crystal ball. When you cannot or don’t know how to directly measure something, you can combine different hypothesis, trends, predictions and observations, and “vector in”, or “triangulate” on an answer. Example of Triangular Thinking with respect to a Schedule Example of Triangular Thinking with respect to a Forecast for the take rate of a new product. One method (one vector) would be to consider the actual customer acquisition model, for example, maybe direct mail. If you mail to 100,000 people and you think you’ll get a 2% response, that gives you 2,000 people who will respond. If you think you’ll close 20% of those, that leaves you with 400 sales. That’s one number. Look now at another vector; e.g. Trend. What has been the track record of new product introductions in the past? If this new introduction is similar, then you might expect similar results. Lastly, perhaps look at the industry and competitive offerings and their take rates (through analysts research, etc), and what market share you might expect. The Triangulation. If all three answers above yield approximately the same value, then you can proclaim that maybe you know what you’re talking about, i.e. they vector in on the same answer, and therefore there is a good probability that this will be true. Conversely, and just as important, if they don’t “triangulate” then maybe your hypothesis or assumptions are incorrect and need to be revisited before coming to a conclusion. ? HeadScratchers LLC 2005-2007 The answer lies within … you can’t directly measure it, nor predict it, But you can vector in on it. Bottoms up, task by task schedule Quality Achievement metrics Top Down Heuristics How similar or different are these answers? Track record Triangula