Title: Logic and Leadership: A View on Quantitative Research
Two weeks ago my
daughter sent me a humorous anecdote that summed up much of my experience and
accompanying anxiety perpetuated by mathematical word problems.
It went like this:
Question: “If you have 4
pencils and I have 7 apples, how many pancakes will fit on the roof?
Answer: “Purple, because
aliens don’t wear hats.”
The reason we all
laugh is because we all relate. We
remember the number two pencil sliding through our sweaty hands, the increased
heart rate, and tightly closing our eyes while trying to envision a train
leaving Chicago going 60 mph meeting another train in New York going 70
mph…it’s brutal. What train will arrive first? But, there is hope. Welcome to
math science, operations research, decision making modeling, and for the
purpose of this blog, quantitative research.
Every day each one
of us is bombarded with decisions. What to wear? Who to marry? Where to work? How
much to invest? Life is, in itself and by definition, a conglomeration of
individual decisions. Making the right decision can feel like walking through a
minefield. Make the right decision and you survive to take another step. Make the
wrong decision and everything changes; sometimes painfully and oftentimes with collateral
damage. As a leader of an organization, we face daily decisions that either add
value or cause damage to the organization’s goals and possibly, its members as
well.
Tero Mamia helps explain
the basis of quantitative research when he said, “quantitative research aims at
(causal) explanations. It answers primarily to why? – questions.” His slide presentation helps define how research
capabilities empower people to prove and disprove various theories through the
delicate balance of theoretical and empirical research methods. Quantitative research is a methodology that aids
in decision making by demonstrating relationships between different variables.
It offers insight into present and future possibilities through the use of regression
analysis, linear regression, and other analytical methods that arm leaders with
the information necessary to make better decisions.
John Kros (2009)
in his book Spreadsheet Modeling for
Business Decisions defined quantitative business decision making as, “The
application of a scientific approach to solving management problems in order to
help managers make better decisions” (p. 4).
He also added, “It is a process-driven modeling approach that forces one
to think logically about the problem at hand” (p. 39). Making decisions and solving problems are
synonymous with leadership. Quantitative
research helps us do both more efficiently.
With seven billion
people in the world and over three million of them living in the US, leaders
understand—and Mamia points out—that conducting surveys and tests on a few folks will help reveal what’s going
on with most folks. One of the best
ways to accomplish this task is by utilizing sampling methods. He stated, “We
study a sample of the group (population) which represents the larger whole.” Statistics at its best.
As leaders, we’re
expected to be aware of what is happening around us and what may happen in the
future. While we can’t predict the
future with absolutes (short of death), there is enough data available to help
us improve the decisions we must make. It is a wonderful tool. However, we must
not fall prey to analysis paralysis—spending all our time reviewing statistical
data. I went to see the movie Lincoln
over the Thanksgiving holiday. Throughout the movie, President Lincoln—one of
our nation’s most respected leaders—knew the decision of abolishing slavery was
a national imperative. He needed no
analytical model to break down his decision. He only needed truth driven by
passion. Part of being a great leader is
knowing when to analyze and when to act. Lincoln analyzed the consequences of the war; he acted on the amendment.
Legacy acts.
Steve
References:
Kros, J. (2009). Spreadsheet
Modeling for Business Decisions. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company.
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