All hail the engineer’s approach to problem solving!

  1. Recognize a need
  2. Define the problem, the objectives and the constraints
  3. Collect information and data
  4. Generate alternative solutions
  5.  Evaluate the consequence of different solutions
  6. Decide
  7. Evaluate the consequences of decisions
  8. In the political policy realm, whenever possible, insure that decisions are reversible after a sufficient period of observation and analysis.
  9.  At every step, appreciate that one lives in a world of probabilities, not certainties.
  10. At every step, appreciate the limits of one's knowledge and understanding of the world.

Politicians and civil servants who favor an engineering approach to problem-solving may be dismissed as “mere technocrats”. The assumption here is that either one is the methodical, step-by-step sort, or you are a Big Picture Person – a visionary.  Granted, at any moment, if one is counting trees, one is unlikely to be seeing the forest. But that doesn’t mean an engineer can’t be a visionary. You just have to switch processing modes.

Reference:

James J. Sharp (1991) Methodologies for problem solving: An engineering approach, The Vocational Aspect of Education, 42:114, 147-157, DOI: 10.1080/10408347308003631