Scientific method is a decision-making approach that focuses on being objective and orderly in testing ideas before accepting them. With the scientific method, managers don’t just assume that their intuition is correct. Instead, they use their intuition and observations to develop hypotheses—educated guesses about the relationships between things or about what will happen in the future. Then they test their hypotheses before making final decisions.
A manager who relies only on intuition might introduce a new product without testing consumer response. But a manager who uses the scientific method might say, “I think (hypotheses) that consumers currently using the most popular brand will prefer our new product. Let’s run some consumer tests. If at least 60 percent of the consumers prefer our product, we can introduce it in a regional test market. If it doesn’t pass the consumer test there, we can make some changes and try again.”
The scientific method focuses an orderly research process. Some managers don’t carefully specify what information they need. They blindly move ahead—hoping that research will provide “the answer.” Other managers may have a clearly defined problem or question but lose their way after that. These hit-or-miss approaches waste both time and money.
My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.
21st Century Organizational Transformation 