Recently, I was reading a book on mathematical history (like everyone does, obviously). In particular, this one covered early developments and practices used by scribes in ancient Babylon and Egypt, and the transition to the Greeks we all know and love, like Pythagoras and Archimedes. It’s always quite fascinating to explore the way that humankind has learned to reason and explain the world around us. As I read, I noted many instances of behavior and processes that those who were unable to take even simple arithmetic for granted employed, and I believe they can be applied to business and interpersonal relationships!

What the Power of Approximation Teaches Us About Problem-Solving

One practice I took inspiration from was how they would go about approximating some difficult divisions and square root type operations, which was to take the average of an easier to calculate number that was a little too big and one that was a little too small. The numbers they obtained with this method could be shockingly accurate compared to what our electronic calculators would show. I even used this method back in school when learning square roots. For example, 16 and 25 are the perfect squares of 4 and 5, so the square root of 20 is probably roughly 4.5 (4.47 with the benefit of a calculator).

Applying Approximation Principles to Business Communication

So, if you’re in a situation where you need to manage a difficult communication, especially one where you have to be a bit firm or find a place to “draw the line,” and you’re unsure of where to draw it, why not try this approximation method? Find out the least you could do that is obviously too strict, then the most you can do that’s obviously too generous, and then evaluate an average that lies somewhere in the middle.

As long as you can establish some reasonable “guideposts” on either end of the true answer, you should be able to closely approach the answer you want. It won’t be helpful if you go too wide with them.

Establishing Guideposts in Customer Project Scopes

For example, let’s consider you have a big customer who is asking to go far beyond the agreed-upon scope of what you agreed to. You could set your “too much” as “I will do everything they need from me regardless”, and obviously, that’s too much, or it would be what you agreed upon in the first place. Inversely, your “too little” could be “I don’t need to go one step outside of what’s clearly written in this contract”. It may seem appealing in theory and occasionally effective, but in this case, it appears overly rigid and risks harming the relationship. We need to calculate our guide posts more closely.

So let’s start with the lower end of the spectrum. Maybe you outline the tasks that you absolutely will do and have already agreed to before they ask for more. Then, once those are decided on and require no further consideration, look at the requests levied on you and decide which ones are totally unreasonable or not currently possible; those are the ones where you would be going too far, and remove those from possible execution.

Now, with the items still left under consideration, which were not obviously “will-do” or “won’t-do” items, you are in your approximation zone, and instead of trying to pinpoint what to do in the whole broad scale of items, you have a smaller, more focused zone to refine. Keep the items in there until you feel that you’ve gotten the feel of what is appropriate to do in this case, and take it back to your partner. Plus, you may even still have a little wiggle room for negotiation!

Now we’ve seen just one way of many that you can take these oxymoronically imprecise mathematical measures from the days of old and apply the spirit of them to your own challenges! After all, back then, the questions and challenges that math would be used for were much more rooted in the day-to-day requirements of civilization than the grand undertakings of moon travel and chemical synthesis. It matters less where it comes from and more the thought process that you can use to provide excellent customer experiences.

Author: Matthew Pollard, Customer Experience Software Engineer at SIOS

Reproduced with the permission from SIOS