What’s in it for me?
Value-generation thanks to the application of EIDOS.
Better Decisions
Decisions are often exclusively based on gut-feeling or on over-precise calculations mocking reliability. Heuristics and other shortcuts make things worse.
Parmenides EIDOS allows for multi-perspective evaluations of options based on transparent criteria and fact based arguments. Qualitative and quantitative aspects can be integrated into decision making in a process that respects both "modes of thinking", rational step by step evaluations and synoptic perspectives taking into account constellatory perception of decision making components.
Better Reasoning
Problem solving often shows poor execution. From inadequate problem statements to over/under emphasizing or even skipping entire reasoning steps there are many areas where problem solving in practice goes wrong.
Parmenides EIDOS forces users to think how they solve problems or structure the problem solving process before diving into its head first and thus helps users finding solutions fitting into the big picture. Such practice with balanced efforts for all problem solving steps (problem formulation, criteria development, identification of key drivers, evaluation of options) can result in innovative product categories or business models, increased resilience, reduced risks or financial benefits such as savings or turnover increase.
Efficient Meetings
Poor agendas, unclear focus, unstructured discussions - there are many reasons why meetings often are unproductive and perceived as a waste of time.
Templates for preparation, facilitation and documentation of meetings help turning both, physical or screen-sharing based / videoconference meetings from a perceived waste of time to a productive element in an institutions knowledge metabolism. The "process component" of the Meeting Efficiency Process Template ensures proper invitation, facilitation, documentation and follow-up.
A common language for experience exchange
Knowledge and experience, e.g. the content of a discussion throughout a meeting or the reasoning behind a decision, are often documented in lengthy sets of slides or in text documents which more and more often only receive a superficial scan.
If employed throughout an institution, Parmenides EIDOS serves as a lingua franca for the exchange of experiences and for the transfer of knowledge. "Storing knowledge as knowledge" based on Parmenides EIDOS' transparent, interactively accessible and modifiable reasoning architectures allows users to quickly assess the reasoning behind a decision that has been made or the substance of a discussion during a meeting. The more users within an institution, the more efficient the knowledge metabolism.
Content before design
It's frightening how much time people spend to format slides in organizations. Managers know to put together convincing charts by means of design.But how about the content?
Humans struggle to deal with complexity. The sequential logic of Powerpoint presentations with it’s inherent – but cognitively inappropriate - bullet point mechanism is suboptimal for presenting complex content. An analysis of drivers and their interactions is very time consuming to do in Powerpoint.
Parmenides EIDOS documents are rich in information content and allow for presenting complex issues in a comprehensive format. Even the interactive Powerpoint reports generated by the “create report” function are capable of conveying the content and creating a common understanding of complex matters – maybe a little bit less “designed” but a so much richer in information transfer.
Combining two worlds of thinking
The mentality and sometime even organizational gap between the perspective of departments driven by quantitative data and others engaged in qualitative decision-making can be huge despite the fact that both perspectives are needed for a successful venture.
Parmenides EIDOS is capable of bridging this gap between qualitative and quantitative elements of a reasoning or decision making process by integrating quantitative data from e.g. controlling or finance into qualitative decision making processes at corporate strategy level within the same framework and engaging the relevant stakeholders in joint decision making formats. The overall quality of organizational reasoning benefits from such a „reconciliation“ of strategic functions such as controlling and finance, corporate development, marketing and others.
Leveraging institutional knowledge and expertise
If we only knew what we know - despite disposing of the necessary knowledge and expertise to solve a problem, institutions often rely on external support and consultancy to find a solution.
Parmenides EIDOS helps structure the available knowledge and expertise into cognitively easy accessible formats stored in a corporate knowledge backbone growing over the years. The knowledge backbone documents and makes accessible an institutions memory even to remote structures of an organization and is crucial for maintaining the corporate knowledge metabolism and hence it’s internal problem solving capability.
Process benefit
Solving problems by hiring external expertise deprives institutions from a source of benefits that is inherent to the process of problem solving. Documenting discussions is inherently difficult in a sequentially readable format.
Running ThinkShops or other collective reasoning processes with Parmenides EIDOS helps to systematically understand and experience how other stakeholders perceive the discussed issue or situation, which solution alternatives others see or prefer, what preferences they reveal and which aspects they emphasize, in short: how your colleagues view the world. This "collateral benefit" is not only a very valuable expansion of capturing other stakeholders' perspectives, ideas and interests but also of fostering team-based creativity and an easily accessible contextual documentation.
Participation
The integration of stakeholders into decision-making or consultative processes often turns out to be a difficult endeavor as discussions get out of hand and the resulting documentation is hard to handle.
By structuring the discussion process into its integral parts and visualizing complex issues, the facilitation of participative processes is made manageable. Instantaneous documentation after the meeting helps increase the participants' confidence in the process.
Empowered employees
Despite their formidable education in business schools and universities, employees rarely use the tools and techniques taught to them and often rely on external opinions to back up decisions rather than trusting their own analysis.
By offering easy to use templates for common management tools and techniques and reasoning frameworks Parmenides EIDOS helps to shift from a culture of external support and guidance to team-oriented, entrepreneurial decision-taking: knowledge and competencies of corporate employees are better utilized, active leadership and management of the reasoning/decision-making process takes place and own insights are expanded/challenged by profound external expertise.
