The Five Ordered Steps of Problem-Solving

Step 5: Evaluate the Solution: Is it working?

We may not be able to ask  "Is our solution working?" because

• We don't know how bad things were when we started implementing the solution (i.e., we didn't objectively quantify how things were), so we can't know whether things have gotten better.
• We don't know what success looks like because we have not defined the solution in terms of what specifically we want to happen and when we want it to happen (e.g., we just wanted to be "more mature" or "be best")

We may not bother to ask "Is it working?" because

• We don't feel we have any other options ("There's nothing else we can do!").
• We are too busy or too distracted to reflect on our goals or how we are progressing towards them.
• Sunk cost fallacy: We suspect we have made a mistake, but we have invested so much (time, money, emotional energy) in the "solution" that we don't feel we can turn back now. Sadly, as the saying goes, we "throw good money after bad." For example,  students may continue in a major they don't like because they have already taken so many courses in that major.  See a 6 minute video illustrating a trap caused by the sunk cost fallacy.
• We have already made a public commitment to take a certain action, so we feel we can't back down now.

We may ask "Is it working?" but get the wrong answer because

• Confirmation bias: We pay attention to evidence that appears to support our beliefs while ignoring or downplaying evidence that appears to refute our beliefs. By looking only at signs indicating that our "solution" is working, we may think we have rationally determined that our solution is working even though it is failing. Remember, even though blood-letting doesn't work, doctors believed in blood-letting for thousands of years.
•  Cognitive dissonance: We can't admit to ourselves that we made the wrong decision, so we rationalize our wrong decision.  For example, cult members who have given up everything to join a cult are resistant to changing their mind about the cult--even after the cult leader's predictions have been disproven.
• The short term outcomes of our decision may be different from the long term outcomes (e.g., increasing the national debt often has the short-term effect of improving the economy but may have a negative long-term effect; allowing companies to pollute may not immediately increase death rates; a change to a business may at first hurt productivity until workers get used to the new procedures; eating that cake may make the dieter feel good in the short-term but bad in the long-term).
• The outcome is affected by factors beyond our control (the world does not stop while we try out solution; instead, lots of other things change--and some of those changes may affect the outcome). For example, the improvement we see may be due to a chance event completely unrelated to our treatment (a lucky coincidence) or to things just returning to normal (regression toward the mean). Because of events beyond our control, we can (a) make the wrong decision but get a good outcome or (b) make the right decision but get a bad outcome.

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