Sign Here: The Power of Decision-Making

“When the sh*t hits the fan, our team really does pull it together”.

My recent focus has been on how teams can create the skillset and environment for effective and confident decision-making when under pressure. Humans are currently unbeaten at context, perspective and conceptual thinking. And yet (unlike a robot or an AI) we may be influenced by unconscious bias that could flaw our decision. Weather says 50% chance of rain but it’s said that all week, so you decide not to pack an umbrella? There’s still a 50/50 likelihood that it will chuck it down, but the Gamblers Fallacy is where we distort the factual odds in light of our recent experiences. Little consequence in this instance, but imagine this at play around a housing design/spec meeting discussing the need for additional safety requirements and suddenly this cognitive (thinking) bias within collective decision-making takes a darker turn.

Watching the horrors of various recent tragic events unfold just this year alone, it seems beyond belief that given all the drone technology that exists, we are unable to get people out of a crisis situation when it counts. In these horrendous real world situations it has become quickly apparent that there are scenarios where no virtual rescue solution exists yet. This has made me far more aware of giving verified safety instructions in every workshop set-up since then, because the reality of what could happen is now firmly on my mind. Being aware of how we think about risk and safety helps keep us alert and aware of the reality around us. When I facilitate safety leadership workshops it is this topic of cognitive bias that stimulates the most discussion.

The Automation and Risk Compensation biases are particularly relevant right now as we experience dramatic advances in technology each month rather than year. Could driving a modern car with automated headlights, wipers and satnav lull us into a false sense of security that dulls our safety instinct? The Automation Bias describes the tendency to depend excessively on automated systems, which can lead to incorrect automated information overriding correct decisions. This is at the heart of the do we/don’t we Driverless Cars debate. We are also prone to the Risk Compensation Bias– which is the tendency to take greater risks when perceived safety increases. If you were to have a spike in the middle of your steering wheel rather than an airbag, you would probably increase your average braking distance. Just even being reminded of these two factors helps us to remain sharper and more vigilant which in turn will nudge our behaviours and choices.

When teams are making collective decisions it also pays to be aware of Parkinson’s Law of Triviality: the tendency to give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. E.g. an organisation may avoid tackling specialised or complex subjects such as highly tricky safety design and instead focus on something easy or rewarding such as the design of an adjacent bin store. This is why decision-making at every level (not just front-line colleagues on the tools) is vital for creating a culture of safety as our workplaces become more automated and removed from reality. Challenging a potentially unsafe decision around a meeting table wearing a suit requires the same skill as challenging a potentially unsafe work request in a confined space wearing PPE. One person, holding another to account in that moment. It isn’t easy and that’s why practising as a team is important – and not just for safety-related situations.

Along with the ability to sell; judgement and decision-making will become an increasingly prized skill within the workplace. There will be less ‘dossy jobs’ as lower-level, simpler or binary decisions are ripe for automation. Any line of enquiry that follows a script towards a set of outcomes can be programmed. I worked the phones for many brands during my student years in the 1990’s where we literally read off a script and the calls were made using an auto-dialler – we wouldn’t need a human for this now as there were no complex decisions to take. The frequency of complex decision-making is probably one of the quickest ways to predict if your job will still require a human within a decade. A recent report to the White House suggests that jobs that pay below $20 per hour have an 83% likelihood of being done by a machine. Timescale unknown, but at the moment developments are happening around a decade ahead of expectation, due to the advances in Deep Learning.

Just like Deep Learning for an AI, it is practice that makes our knowledge permanent. Give yourself, your teams and any children in your life the opportunity to stop, think and decide for themselves as much as possible. The ability to choose rather than consume data is good practice for making decisions in a later crisis or safety-related situation. Real world brain training.

P.S. The robots are coming… Judgement and decision-making will become a prized skill so nurture it now.

Laura Thomson-Staveley is founder and leadership coach at Phenomenal Training and co-host of Secrets from A Coach podcast. For more information visit: phenomenaltraining.com and secretsfromacoach.com