Situation: Differential situation

Hi, welcome to the twenty seventh day of The Leads intellectual challenge: a 30-day challenge with Fatai Kareem. If you would like to understand how complex situation affects you and how to eliminate complexity, read the twenty sixth day challenge here.

Today, he will be discussing another type of situation known as differential situation. Why do you compare and contrast two things? Why do you have scale of preference? Of what importance is difference to our choice and decision? 

Well, understanding differential situation will enable to know the importance of difference and how it  affects every activity you do and the result you get. What is differential situation?

Differential situation is a situation that involves inequality or differential treatment and conditions. This can be expressed in terms of preference for one condition over others. This is a situation that lay emphasis on the importance of different features or characteristics exhibited by different things or people. It aids comparing two or more conditions with one another, in order to bring out those things that make one to differ from the other. Therefore, coming up with a scale of preference or rank showing the relative importance of these conditions. This can be useful for prioritisation.

This situation is useful when there is a need to prioritise different tasks, activities or projects to be done. It enables you to look out for those things that are the most important ones and prioritise them first while other things follow. It gives a useful picture of how different conditions rank based on their importance, authority or benefits starting from the most important ones to the less important ones. Therefore, making it possible to make rational decision by organising and directing resources to the most important ones.

This situation may also involve preferential treatment or favourism such that someone or something is treated differently from others and at the expense of others due to their difference. This is the case with ethnocentrism or racism in which you consider your ethnic group or race to be better than other ethnic groups or race. Likewise, inequality may be exhibited in this situation such that some sets of people have  power, property and privilege while other sets of people are deprived. Therefore, leading to different categories of people based on their status such as poor, average or affluence.

This situation may follow discriminatory propensity for disparity, a concept proposed by Fatai Kareem, that states that a person or an entity is likely to act or treat other people or entities differently where lies preference or advantage in their difference. That is, different categories or groups of people maybe subjected to different treatments or offer due to the benefit attached to each category or group. People that are ethnocentric, racist or egoistic are more likely to exhibit this tendency. Also, business that applies price discrimination tends to exhibit this tendency.

This situation is explained by the theory of difference, a theory proposed by Fatai Kareem, which proposes that every situation comes with different options or courses of action from which a person chooses which one is the most satisfactory or suitable to his/her need/preference. This is based on the fact that every situational factor or condition has its effect, which makes it to be different from others. It is the difference in these options or conditions facing you that enable you to understand which one is the most important or beneficial based on your need or preference by comparing one factor or condition to others. This enables you to understand what is likely going to happen if you do nothing, or chooses to do something at the expense of other things. This, therefore, leads to opportunity cost. This can be in form of making a decision between doing nothing or something, or between doing nothing or choosing to do something from different possible options.

This situation aids gap analysis by bringing out the difference between two conditions. This can be in form of a difference between past condition and present condition, or current state and desired state. Therefore, it enables you to understand if there is an improvement or not. Or, the amount of resources that will be needed to bridge the gap, hence eliminating the difference. It also aids comparative analysis by comparing the difference between two or more conditions with one another in order to understand which one is performing better than the other. Likewise, comparing the difference between planned outcome with actual outcome in order to determine whether the planned outcome is achieved or not. Hence, enabling you to determine the necessary action to be taken. Also, it enables you to compare the impact of change on one condition to another condition by determining the difference that the change brings when it occurs and how much this difference affects you.

This situation maybe desired if you are not satisfied with the current condition, hence you want a differential situation involving a desired condition. Likewise, this situation maybe be hindered if you are satisfied with the current condition, hence you do not want a differential situation involving an undesirable condition. Also, understanding the effect of different situational factors or conditions is the key to understanding the importance of these factors or conditions and appropriately handling them. For example, kidney beans and soybeans are both beans, yet they are different. They have different taste, look, size and smell. This means that some people may prefer soybeans to kidney beans because of the taste. While for some people, it maybe because of the size. This also applies to customer satisfaction such that different customers get satisfaction from the same product because of different reasons or features. This is where personalised service or product comes into play in improving customer experience.

Case study

1. A survey taken by ABXYZ  company, a service-oriented company, shows that their customer satisfaction is very low. Meanwhile, all customers are serviced the same way. How can differential situation be helpful in improving the customer satisfaction of ABXYZ company?

2. Tuesday, the human resource manager of XYZ plc, is an ethnocentric person. He has five job candidates for a vacant position in the company. Two candidates out of these candidates are from his ethnic group. These two candidates are the least competent candidates for the position. How is Tuesday likely going to handle this situation?

3. Joy has three job offers. Should she accept all the offers? How will she determine the most satisfactory job offer to be accepted? 

Disclaimer: All names used are for illustration purpose.

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