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Hint's on Problem SolvingExcerpted from the writings of Russel Ackoff Terms: data, information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom Processed data is information. The processing is meant to increase its usefulness. Information is contained in descriptions: answers to questions that begin with who, what, when, where, and how many. Knowledge is conveyed by instructions: answers to how-to questions. Understanding is conveyed by explanations: answers to why questions. Most schools transmit information, spend less time on transmitting knowledge (analytical thinking) and almost no time of transmitting understanding (synthetic thinking). Information, knowledge, and understanding enable us to increase efficiency, not necessarily effectiveness. Effectiveness is evaluated efficiency. It is efficiency multiplied by value, efficiency for a valued outcome. Intelligence is the ability to increase efficiency; wisdom is the ability to increase effectiveness. Growth does not require an increase in value; development does. Wisdom deals with values. It involves the exercise of judgement. Evaluations of efficiency are all based on logic. They can be done by a machine. They are impersonal. Efficiency of an act can be described independent of the actor. Not so for effectiveness. A judgement of the value of an act is never independent of the judge. Pitfalls 1. The right information cannot be extracted from the wrong data. Students are taught to perform statistical operations without understanding them. As a result, they extract misinformation from date and cannot tell the difference between misinformation and information produced by others. Why? a) Statistics provide a way of arriving at inferences from a sample drawn in a prescribed way from a well-specified population to that population Inferences arrived at from samples drawn in other ways are not valid. Nevertheless, they are commonly made. b) Correlation analysis is one of the most frequently used ways of processing data. It provides a measure of the association between variables, the degree to which they tend to change in the same or opposite directions. Unfortunately, those who find a correlation between variables often erroneously infer that one of them causes the changes in the other. c) In estimating the value of a variable, two types of error can be made: overestimating and underestimating. One must know the cost of the error to understand their relevance. Convention estimating assumes that the cost of an overestimate of a specified magnitude is equal to the cost of an underestimate of the same magnitude. Answering questions or solving exercises does not teach one how to solve problems. An exercise is a problem from which at least some of the information required to formulate it is denied to the one asked to solve it. It's possible that some relevant information has been left out. In real life, a crucial part of problem solving is separating relevant from irrelevant information. A question is an exercise from which the reason for wanting to solve it has been removed. It is an unmotivated exercise, a problem with no context. Nevertheless, the reasons for wanting to answer a question determines what is the right answer to it. Problem Treatments 1. Absolution consists of ignoring a problem and hoping it will go away or solve itself. 2. Resolution consists of doing something that yields an outcome that is considered to be good enough: one that suffices. Resolutions rely heavily on past experience, trial and error, qualitative judgement, and common sense. 3. Solution consists of doing something that yields what is currently considered to be the best possible outcome: one that optimizes. 4. Dissolution consists of redesigning the entity that has the problem or its environment so as to idealize: eliminate the problem and enable the entity to do better in the future than the best it can do now. Problems are Abstractions Problems are not the objects of direct experience. They are abstractions extracted from experience by analysis. Messes are dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of problems, not individual or isolated problems. A system is a whole whose essential properties are not to be found in any of its parts. The properties of a system derive from the interactions of its parts, not their actions taken separately. It follows that when a system is taken apart, it loses its essential properties. Furthermore, when a part of a system is separated from that system, it also loses its essential properties. Therefore when a mess , which is a system of problems, is taken apart, it loses its essential properties and so does each of its parts. The behavior of a mess depends more on how the treatment of its parts interact than on how they act independently of each other. A partial solution to a whole system of problems is better than a whole solution to each of its parts taken separately. Students of business are not taught that effective management of organized behavior is the management of interactions, not actions. They are taught that if they improve the performance of each part of a corporation taken separately, the performance of the corporation as a whole will be improved. This is absolutely false. Fortunately, improving the performance of each part taken separately does not necessarily make the whole perform as badly as possible. Analysis and Synthesis Analysis is a three step process: first something is taken apart, or disaggregated; then an effort is made to understand the behavior of its parts taken separately; finally, understanding of the parts is aggregated in an effort to understand the whole. Analysis loses the ability to explain the systems behavior. It cannot yield understanding, only knowledge. For example, no amount of analysis of automobiles will explain why drivers in America and England drive on different sides. Synthesis involves three steps, but they are the inverse of those involved in analysis: first the thing to be understood is taken to be part of a larger whole. The larger containing whole(s) is/are identified; then the behavior of the containing whole is explained; finally, the understanding of the contained whole is disaggregated to explain the behavior or properties of that part which is to be explained. The behavior and properties of that part are explained by revealing its role or function in the larger whole of which it is part. Analysis reveals the structure of a system, how it works. Its product is knowledge. Synthesis reveals why a system has the properties it has or works the way it does. Its product is understanding. Clearly, we need both. Creativity is a process involving three steps: 1. Identification of self imposed constraints. These consist of one or more fundamental assumptions that appear to us to be obviously true, on which our choice of behavior is based, and which significantly reduce the range of choices available to us. 2. Denial of the validity of the assumption(s) identified 3. Exploration of the consequences of such denial.
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