Changing a Good Decision Making Process Based on Results

Construction projects are complex requiring thousands of decisions made across dozens of teams over many months to ultimately result in a good outcome

D. Brown Management Profile Picture
D. Brown Management
March 4, 2018 2 minute read
Share
Leadership Tools: Resulting. Don't Confuse Good Results with Good Decision Making Processes. Book: Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke.

As a leader in the construction industry the majority of your value-add is:

  1. Making good decisions
  2. Ensuring those decisions are executed
  3. Teaching others how to do the same  

In a simple system the decision tree may have a few known variables and a single clear path which is easily trainable.  

Most project decisions are more complex having more variables and outside influences impacting results over a longer time span.  Given time pressures and limits of the human brain only a few of those variables can be accounted for accurately in our mental model of a situation.  

The results of a good decision making process are not 100% good but the average results over time are good.  Resulting is a term used in poker when a player starts changing a good decision making process based on the resulting outcomes.  This seems logical but will lead to an overall decline in results with increased variability.   

Smarter, Faster, Better

Contact us to learn how we train teams to make better decisions

Winston Churchill - Success, Failure and Enthusiasm
When there are no clear answers, it is critical to experiment, learn, and rapidly scale up those things that work. "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
Related Article
Lean Principle - Understanding Lean Construciton
Lean is a body of knowledge dating back hundreds of years focused on sustainably growing an organization. During the last 20 years the construction industry has been rapidly adopting some of these tools to improve productivity.
Related Article
Directly Responsible Individual (DRI)
Defining a single Directly Responsible Individual (DRI) for an outcome is a foundation of effective process and organizational design. It is often misused when the individual doesn't have the right capabilities, capacity, authority, or management.
Related Article