Analytic Questions
Once, a while back, I got a new boss. I was one of several Division Chiefs in his Directorate and was the only operations research analysis Division that worked for him. At our Meet & Greet he confessed to not being an OR analyst and that this was the first time he oversaw such a shop. He asked me, “What questions should I be asking you?”
I thought about it a while and came back to him (a bit later) and said, “You should ask three things on any analytic effort:
Do you think these are the right questions?
Post your response here on LinkedIn. If you have a longer response feel free to email me at: [email protected], with subject Analytic Questions, and I’ll summarize responses.
Associate Dean, AFIT School of Systems and Logistics
5 个月Jerry, I think these are good questions, but I will continue to think more deeply about them. I really wanted to comment on the best question: “What questions should I be asking you?” We almost always have areas in our purview we are not familiar with. I think a great leader acknowledges this and tries to learn, and the best way to learn is to keep asking questions.
Systems Thinking and Systems Engineering advocate and thought leader
5 个月I’ll come at this from a Systems Thinking perspective, i.e., trying to understand the problem space before diving into the Systems Engineering solution space — the first question could be “What was the question you started out to answer?” this recognizes that the focus of the effort may well have evolved as the study went on; then move on to “What was the question you actually answered?”