Identify Objective

Finding the question and importantly finding the right question is a step towards finding the right answer.

As Albert Einstein once said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask… for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”

For a business, the objective can be anything and we can identify our objective once we start questioning the things. In a business, there exist multiple types of streams and there is always a scope of optimization in each stream.

Scope of optimization can be:

• Reducing the manufacturing cost for an item
• Increasing the efficiency of Machines
• To increase the company revenue etc.
  

And for solving any such problems, you need to dig deeper and understand “are there any underlying factors responsible for such behavior”, If yes, you need to design one hypothesis/statement

Your Hypothesis can be:

• Negative comments over social media is a prime factor for our deteriorating sales
• Strict working hours are reducing the productivity of employees
• Vehicle consumes less fuel on highways than streets
  
  

Once your hypothesis/statement is ready, the next step is to collect supporting data for it.

You need to make sure few things:

• Data should be accessible in some way so that you can validate your hypothesis. If collection of data is hard/impossible, probably you need to re-design your hypothesis
• Your hypothesis should help your business in some way because collecting and analyzing data is time taking, and there is no point in validating a hypothesis if it is not going to help your business in any way