Conservative Decision Making

Do You Make Conservative Decisions?

Conservative Decision Making … often people take shortcuts and make non-conservative decisions to save time or money. Incident investigators often find non-conservative decisions after major accidents. For example the:

• BP Deepwater Horizon well blowout and explosion
• Chernobyl reactor core meltdown
• Shuttle disasters (both of them)
• Boeing 737 Max crashes

And these five examples are just a short list to remind you of the many other examples where non-conservative decision making got companies in trouble.

Who Makes Non-Conservative Decisions?

Many times people at the pointy end of the stick (the workers) are blamed for making non-conservative decisions. Of course, this happens. But investigators seem to look the other way when non-conservative decisions are being made by senior executives.

Probably the most famous of these decisions is the decision by senior management that there would be NO ADDITIONAL SIMULATOR TRAINING requirements for the new 737 Max. They would simply have a computerized short course on a tablet and then, after a test, the pilots could start flying. There was no mention of the new computerized system (MCAS) to prevent stalls or how to deactivate it if it caused problems.

The Verge, a technology on-line publication, wrote the following:

It’s a perfect example of the cross purposes at which business, technology, and safety often find themselves. With its bottom line threatened, Boeing focused on speed instead of rigor, cost-control instead of innovation, and efficiency instead of transparency. The FAA got caught up in Boeing’s rush to get the Max into production, arguably failing to enforce its own safety regulations and missing a clear opportunity to prevent these two crashes.

Eventually, it cost the CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, his job.

Do you think the engineers and managers would make different decisions today? Of course. That’s the advantage of hindsight. But Conservative Decision Making is about making the right decisions in advance (proactively).

Admiral Rickover and Conservative Decision Making

We have previously detailed how Admiral Rickover developed the first high-reliability organization is our series of articles summarized in Stopping the Normalization of Deviation with the Normalization of Excellence – How Admiral Rickover Did It. Conservative Decision Making was a key part of his philosophy. But he didn’t call it Conservative Decision Making. He called it Facing the Facts. We wrote about Facing the Facts at this link:

https://www.taproot.com/normalization-of-excellence-the-rickover-legacy-facing-the-facts/

Rickover described Facing the Facts as:

“… To resist the human inclination to hope that things will work out,
despite evidence or suspicions to the contrary.“

“If conditions require it, you must face the facts and brutally make needed changes
despite significant costs and schedule delays. … The person in charge must
personally set the example in this area and require his subordinates to do likewise.“

The link above provides two design and production examples that are directly applicable to the 737 Max decisions and the alternate way that Rickover would have approached the decisions.

Rickover, who was personally involved in major design decisions, would not allow corners to be cut.

Who Needs to Learn Conservative Decision Making?

Unfortunately, most human performance improvement programs teach Conservation Decision Making to people on the shop floor (workers and supervisors). Who really needs the training? Senior management.

• Plant Managers,
• Directors,
• COOs, and
• CEOs.

These senior leaders set the tone for decisions made throughout the organization.

Learn More About Conservative Decision Making

Want to test your ability to spot conservative (or non-conservative) decision?

Want to learn additional techniques to improve human performance.

Want to learn which techniques work the best?

Then you need to attend the new Stopping Human Error Training.

When is the next course?

June 14-15 in Knoxville, TN.

CLICK HERE for upcoming course dates and locations.

If you are ready to register for the Stopping Human Error Course, use this link:

https://store.taproot.com/search?q=Human+error

New Book on Stopping Human Error

If you attend the course, you will get the book, Stopping Human Error, as part of the course materials.

If you would like to read the book before you attend the class, you can order it by clicking HERE.

Want to read the book’s Foreword before buying the book? CLICK HERE.

We are looking forward to seeing you at the course.

Summit Presentation on Conservative Decision Making

Also, you may want to attend the “Admiral Rickover and Conservative Decision Making” session being presented by Mark Paradies at the 2021 Global TapRooT® Summit being held in Knoxville, TN, on June 16-18. Get more Summit info by CLICKING HERE.