Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Comparing Courses of Action

Comparing Courses of Action.

Last night I had a dream. Christianity had decided to hold a meeting to determine how to head off a growing world tension leading to war. They invited of all people, military leaders, to decide how to avert the looming crisis.

What was interesting in the dream was the characters.

Character 1: Nothing can be done to avert it…one can only prepare and be ready in the hopes that when it happens your side wins.

Character 2: I have seen the plans…if we have a conflict on the scope of WW2 the consequences would be catastrophic.

Character 3: Everyone still runs their lives based upon emotions, primarily greed, and their drives to meet basic needs. Very little is really determined using reason even though afterwards people sometimes claim they did. “The reason I did what I did….” they say is something that makes sense in retrospect but not something they gave much thought to up front.

Character 4: Believed the Spirit is at work and if the crisis is to be averted there needs to be a spiritual awakening or renaissance.

In the dream the characters would say something and look over my way. When I didn’t respond, they sort of drifted out of the picture. This is a typical dream and I wanted to write it down before I forgot it. It begs the question, who are these characters. Are they spirits or figments of my imagination?

Anyway getting back to problem solving. Seems like BP has been able to cap the well…bravo! There are still a litany of problems left to follow.

Suppose you are looking in the paper for a new job and trying to decide which ones to apply for.

You define the problem: I need to determine the job best suited to my needs and those of my family.

Facts: I am unemployed, my wife is nagging me to get off my lazy butt and find a job.
Assumptions: I am not going to hit the lotto. Hollywood is not going to make me an offer…

I am qualified to perform three types of jobs…a waiter, a mechanic or a teacher. Reading the classified I find three jobs…really four choices because there is always the do nothing option and collect unemployment. In order to assess these three jobs you might decide to use decision criteria. Lets say these are Pay, job satisfaction, and working hours.

Waiter: Pay: This is an exclusive restaurant and they pay ten dollars per hour plus tips which average ten more dollars. Job Satisfaction: This is a job you are well qualified for as you have worked at it part time to pay for your education as a teacher. You can work eight to twelve hours a day.

Mechanic: This job pays 18 dollars an hour. It is something you have an aptitude for. The benefits are good. It is a typical nine to five job.

Teacher: This job pays 14 dollars an hour but has great benefits and offers 2 months paid vacation in the summer. Of the three it is the one you went to school to learn and enjoy doing most.

Collect Unemployment: You have a years worth of benefits stored up that pays roughly ten dollars per hour but no benefits.

Using the pay criteria you can calculate how much each of the options would be worth to you. Next you would determine the hours the job provides and finally how satisfying you find the employment. Two of these are objective criteria and one is subjective. You crunch the numbers and get a warm and fuzzy regarding satisfaction and make your choice.

A second method is comparing the course of action with each other. Here you develop a matrix of sorts and compare the criteria of one job with the other. Regarding job satisfaction you rank order those from the one you like best to least.

Finally there is the non analytical approach where you do the comparison in your head and take a swag. (Stupid, wild ass guess.)

This is the manner in which courses of action are assessed and evaluated.