More on each of the Blocks later.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Friday, May 8, 2009
The Nature of Evaluation
In many aspects of life that require a decision to be made, it is guaranteed that different people will evaluate it differently and hence decide differently. And this is what puzzles me. The Diversity among people when it comes to evaluation! Even with people with similar intellectual, educational or experience capacities, their evaluation of situations seems very different.
Take the cases of Evaluating a new business proposal; a team decision; a crisis situation; a relationship; a job; a stock. Why is it so difficult to get people to agree to a common decision that is acceptable to all? Why is the outcome of evaluation so different among people?
As a reader, do not confuse Evaluation with Calculation.
Calculation is a matter of applying certain established models and rules to arrive at a solution. While Evaluation can also be done through certain models and rules, the key distinction is that; while Calculative situations yield ONE result regardless of the model, Evaluation seems to yield multiple solutions each depending upon the model used.
So given a specific RPM, an aerospace engineer can easily calculate the amount of air and fuel flow required and thus help determine Carburetor sizing. Given the two sides of right angled triangle, we can calculate the third side.
In the cases mentioned above, there is a fixed solution. In some case, the solution might be range bound. The laws help us chose the best solutions among available ones. Problem Solved. We could call these as objective methods since they help us plug in some values and arrive at one best solution.
But there are situations where multiple answers exist, but no defined method / rule / law exists which give us the best solution.
Take for example the evaluation of one's job. What you think of your job will not be the same as what someone else think of it, even though both of you might be peers. We know that there are only a few answers that exist when you eventually evaluate it: quit or stay. There are variations to the answers (eg: stay in the company but move to different job, stay now quit later, etc) but still there are fixed set of answers. There doesn’t seem to be a widely accepted model that can tell you which is the best option among this finite set.
The same goes for a lot of situations faced in life. Evaluating a marketing strategy, marriage, career path… Today there doesn’t seem to be a proven methodology for stock selection or understanding your customer or convincing another person even though a lot of data is available for use. A lot of models DO exist which seem to be objective in nature from the outset, but in truth they do not lead to a decision acceptable to all.
Take for example, Porter's five forces or the
4P's or the Blue ocean strategy etc. The parts of these models have so much subjectivity ingrained in them, that it is rarely possible to get one acceptable solution out.
At work, I am expected to implement these "models" to situations in my organization and arrive at a conclusion. While I am in process of working through these models, I feel a tinge of uncertainty because I am bringing in a lot of subjective decisions into play. The organization gets to hear the final possible solution, but it is in fact based on the subjective interpretation of the person who applied the model.
And this is what piques my interest. Some problems don’t seem to have a definite answer. An answer is forced upon them; more often by theoretical models that have assumptions built into them, which have a probabilistic chance of coming true in the future.
And somehow in spite of all these subjective decisions that are made on a daily basis, in spite of all the probabilistic success of these decisions, the world survives! The organization continues to operate. Society moves on. Life becomes better!
It really is amazing to know that the world tolerates and endures bad decisions that are made on such frequent basis.
Take the cases of Evaluating a new business proposal; a team decision; a crisis situation; a relationship; a job; a stock. Why is it so difficult to get people to agree to a common decision that is acceptable to all? Why is the outcome of evaluation so different among people?
As a reader, do not confuse Evaluation with Calculation.
Calculation is a matter of applying certain established models and rules to arrive at a solution. While Evaluation can also be done through certain models and rules, the key distinction is that; while Calculative situations yield ONE result regardless of the model, Evaluation seems to yield multiple solutions each depending upon the model used.
So given a specific RPM, an aerospace engineer can easily calculate the amount of air and fuel flow required and thus help determine Carburetor sizing. Given the two sides of right angled triangle, we can calculate the third side.
In the cases mentioned above, there is a fixed solution. In some case, the solution might be range bound. The laws help us chose the best solutions among available ones. Problem Solved. We could call these as objective methods since they help us plug in some values and arrive at one best solution.
But there are situations where multiple answers exist, but no defined method / rule / law exists which give us the best solution.
Take for example the evaluation of one's job. What you think of your job will not be the same as what someone else think of it, even though both of you might be peers. We know that there are only a few answers that exist when you eventually evaluate it: quit or stay. There are variations to the answers (eg: stay in the company but move to different job, stay now quit later, etc) but still there are fixed set of answers. There doesn’t seem to be a widely accepted model that can tell you which is the best option among this finite set.
The same goes for a lot of situations faced in life. Evaluating a marketing strategy, marriage, career path… Today there doesn’t seem to be a proven methodology for stock selection or understanding your customer or convincing another person even though a lot of data is available for use. A lot of models DO exist which seem to be objective in nature from the outset, but in truth they do not lead to a decision acceptable to all.
Take for example, Porter's five forces or the
4P's or the Blue ocean strategy etc. The parts of these models have so much subjectivity ingrained in them, that it is rarely possible to get one acceptable solution out.
At work, I am expected to implement these "models" to situations in my organization and arrive at a conclusion. While I am in process of working through these models, I feel a tinge of uncertainty because I am bringing in a lot of subjective decisions into play. The organization gets to hear the final possible solution, but it is in fact based on the subjective interpretation of the person who applied the model.
And this is what piques my interest. Some problems don’t seem to have a definite answer. An answer is forced upon them; more often by theoretical models that have assumptions built into them, which have a probabilistic chance of coming true in the future.
And somehow in spite of all these subjective decisions that are made on a daily basis, in spite of all the probabilistic success of these decisions, the world survives! The organization continues to operate. Society moves on. Life becomes better!
It really is amazing to know that the world tolerates and endures bad decisions that are made on such frequent basis.
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