As I finish my “SDA Application Portfolio” series I think about the utility of the knowledge gained in this class. It was one of those classes where you are not taught how financial instruments work, how brand management is done, nor how profitability is calculated. There were no formulas to memorize, no equations to be remembered. It did not go into the world of marketers or traders, it did not made me analyze a country’s economic growth, it did not teach me how to increase ROI. Yet, it taught me all that and more.

You may ask – What was this course? How does it fit into the MBA curriculum? How will it help you in the long run? Answers will follow.

This course was called “Strategic Decision Analysis”. It was a course that harnessed the power of analysis and thinking in order to take decisions and increase your chances of success. The course introduced many concepts such as Negotiations, Prisoner’s Dilemma, Voting, and Auctions, among others. But more than that, this course provided insight into how a human mind works and what it thinks. You don’t need to be a CFA, a Six Sigma black belt holder, or a Statistics major to understand all this. All you need is common sense thinking and more importantly what the other person is thinking.

It fits well into an MBA curriculum because it is expected of us to go out and take decisions. Difficult decisions. Decisions that will affect companies, people, nations. Decisions that will alter the way you live, you eat, you sleep, and all that in between. How can you take such decisions and maximize your chances to take the right kind of decisions? Note that when you are taking the decisions there is always someone else taking a similar type of decision. You have one goal – to win in this duel of decision making. Because if you don’t win, somebody else takes all the glory or the pain associated with the decision. This course, in part, was about maximizing your chances to win.

With knowledge comes great power. But also comes with it the “curse of knowledge”. It is dangerous and can be applied dangerously. An incomplete assessment of your own understanding of the knowledge can actually lead to disaster. So it becomes important that we become competent in the use of this powerful knowledge and how we apply it.

The reason I am stressing this is because the knowledge is not just limited to the world of business. Your understanding of six sigma will not make you a great husband, a great father. But this knowledge is different. It spans our daily life and our relationships. Thus it becomes more important to understand the subject matter closely and intimately. The most important piece of this knowledge is – knowing what the other person is thinking. Not what you know and think. Bluntly speaking – you need to drop your ego from the equation to apply this knowledge. You have to stop force fitting because there are ample opportunities to do so. One formula to apply this knowledge is this –> First, you need to drop what you know. Second, know what the other person knows. Third, apply what you know and what the other person does not know. What you know is what you have learnt from this course, from your observations, and from the uncommon common sense that has been bestowed upon you.

Final thought – Always remember – Cooperation is better than defection! It will become all too apparent for you to defect with this knowledge. With this toolkit in hand, you will take decisions that go against the grain of this thought, that of cooperation. Recognize such tendencies, observe your thought process, re-evaluate the knowledge, and then apply it again.