Life-Changing Decisions
What is a Life-Changing Decision?
Have you made life-changing decisions? You may have made many and never even realized that you were making them.
Robert Frost wrote about how you can make a decision and never really know the impact that decision made:
Taking the road less traveled made all the difference. But was it a positive outcome or a negative outcome?
Since the other road was not taken, can you be sure that the road you took was the right decision?
It reminds me of the physics paradox called Schrödinger’s cat.
So, quantum mechanics isn’t reality. Instead, it is a model we use to understand reality.
In reality, after we make a decision, we can observe the outcome. However, we can’t observe the outcomes of other possible decisions. Those decisions not made are unknown and unknowable.
Plus, not making a decision is still a decision.
What if you change your mind sometime later? Those are two decisions. And the outcomes of those two decisions may differ from making the second decision earlier.
Who knew decision-making could be so complex!
Therefore, a life-changing decision is one that could result in death or have a profoundly negative impact on someone’s life. Or maybe on Schrödinger’s cat.
Now let’s reflect on reality…
Conservative Decisions
In reality, your decisions will be judged with the benefit of hindsight. And as we all know, hindsight is 20/20.
After an accident, the decision that “led” to the accident will be viewed as a mistake. We tend to see these decisions as “non-conservative.”
People want to make decisions that don’t lead to accidents. They want to make conservative decisions. But the problem is that decisions involve uncertainty.
Let’s look at an example.
In this example, a steel pipe carries a hazardous fluid (chemicals, steam, radioactive waste, or other hazardous substances). After a decade in service, the pipe is observed to be corroding at an unexpectedly high rate. The corrosion will eventually cause the pipe to burst, releasing hazardous material. However, the actual corrosion rate is somewhat unknown, so the time we have to fix the pipe is uncertain.
What is known is the cost of fixing the pipe (expensive) and that production will be shut down while the pipe is being fixed (also expensive).
If we wait, we can plan to have the pipe fixed during a scheduled outage or when production is less valuable. A planned replacement should be less expensive than an immediate shutdown.
What do you do? Do you shut down immediately to fix the pipe, or do you wait?
If you wait, how long will you wait? Each time you try to decide whether to fix the pipe or wait, you will face the same problem; however, you may have better data to make your decision if you wait.
If you wait too long, there will be an accident, and your decision to wait will be viewed as non-conservative.
But if you decide to fix it now, you will be judged for failing to meet your production quotas, and you can’t prove that your decision to fix the pipe now prevented an accident.
The most conservative decision is to fix the pipe now to prevent the accident.
The second most conservative decision is to study the corrosion, gather more data, and postpone the fix at least until the next turnaround. If the pipe doesn’t burst, this could be viewed as a good decision.
The more one waits without an accident, the better the decision to wait looks. However, the pipe will eventually burst, at which time waiting will appear to be a poor decision.
So, in the poem, we can never know what would have happened if Robert Frost had taken the other road. And unless we open the box, we will never know if Schrödinger’s cat is dead or alive.
But, if instead of a cat in the box, it was one of your children, what would you do? You wouldn’t wait. You would open the box and get your kid out as fast as possible. In fact, you wouldn’t put your kid in the box at all.
So, why would you take more risk with your employees? The conservative decision is to FIX THE PIPE and not risk the pipe failing.
When you start making decisions as if your family’s lives are at stake, you might change your whole decision-making framework.
For another perspective on the cost of bad decisions, read “Stop the Sacrifices” at THIS LINK.
What Would Admiral Rickover Do?
We have previously detailed how Admiral Rickover developed the first high-reliability organization in 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.
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.“
Rickover, who was personally involved in major design decisions, would not allow corners to be cut. He said:
“I have a son. I love my son. I want everything that I do to be so safe
that I would be happy to have my son operating it.
That’s my fundamental rule.”
• Admiral Rickover
The next time you are faced with a life-changing decision, reread this article and then make a conservative decision as if the life of your family depended on the outcome.
(NOTE: No cats were injured in the writing of this article.)
