Synergistic Red Fuse ...

mapman
13,507 posts
07-14-2016 12:42pm
"Read up about the Challenger space shuttle disaster for a textbook example. I worked in Huntsville Al. at the time down teh road from Marshal Space Flight Center where those engines were tested. My companies Computer Aided Design software at the time was used to design the shuttle. Human error not technology led to its fate. I was still a young pup but I witnessed how all the engineers I knew were totally shattered that day."

My friend from school in the Aero dept. at UVa wound up as executive director of the Challenger disaster Investigation, the Rogers Commission. He was the one who didn’t allow Richard Feynman’s report to be included in the main report, from what I can gather, because they clashed personally and because Feyman was rather eccentric. Too eccentric for Keel, apparently. 

Its true that "analysis paralysis"  is a common plague historically, but in software engineering for example, modern Agile or iterative development paradigms address it.   

Older traditional  development paradigms often referred to as "waterfall"  development have fallen out of favor these days in most any progressive development organization. 

Waterfall development depended on thorough analysis of the problem up front to determine a plan for development.  That approach fails as problems become too complex to assess completely and accurately up front, leading to either analysis paralysis ie doing nothing until the analysis is complete or heading down a poorly understood path doomed to fail.

Iterative development is more agile because you attempt to build something based on the key known requirements regularly, like once every few weeks and then stop and reassess so what was learned can be applied effectively to the next iterative phase of development.

So analysis paralysis can certainly still exist but is far less problematic as a whole these days than in years past. 

Today's complex and fast moving world has no room for "analysis paralysis" in product development.

how would you compare the Sr black with the am beeswax shd? 

Al sez:

" Although having dealt with countless engineers during the course of my career, as well as being one of them, my perception has been that there are many cases in which perfectionism tends to be carried to extremes. And many engineers tend to be a bit too dogmatic and inflexible in how they approach their work. All of which can result in the paralysis by analysis that OP referred to."

Exactly, Al. 

Considering what Al said there, and considering the personalities of sales people who are happy closing a sale 50% of the time they make a sales call, or even less, its easy to see why so many sales people have such a difficult time selling to the engineer type. They're actually conflicting personality types.

Once a salesperson takes the care and the time to address the needs of the other person, understands the prospects motivation, and then points the prospect in the right direction, success usually follows.

Studying personality types really does gives a salesperson an edge up on the competition and imparts a lot of power to the salesperson during the sales process.

These are some of the differences in my business between a true professional and an also-ran. The most important attribute of all though is honesty to a fault.

There is a fine line between a professional salesperson and a con-man. A true professional in the sales field will never suggest or do anything that is a disadvantage to, or for, his/her customer.  A con-man may make millions by being among the greatest salespeople in the world, but they usually end up in prison. Think Bernie Madoff. 

OP