In the nuclear industry, most decisions are at least arguably “hard,” i.e., decision makers can agree on the facts and identify areas where there is risk or uncertainty. A recent New Yorker article* on making an indisputably “soft” decision got us wondering if the methods and philosophy described in the article might provide some insight into qualitative personal decisions in the nuclear space.
Author Joshua Rothman’s interest in decision making was piqued by the impending birth of his first child. When exactly did he decide that he wanted children (after not wanting them) and then participate with his wife to make it happen? As he says, “If I made a decision, it wasn’t a very decisive one.” Thus began his research into decision making methods and philosophy.
Rothman opens with a quick review of several decision making techniques. He describes Benjamin Franklin’s “prudential algebra,” Charles Darwin’s lists of pros and cons, Leo Tolstoy’s expositions in War and Peace (where it appears the biggest decisions basically make themselves), and modern decision science processes that develop decisions through iterative activities performed by groups, scenario planning and war games.
Eventually the author gets to decision theory, which holds that sound decisions flow from values. Decision makers ask what they value and then seek to maximize it. But what if “we’re unsure what we care about, or when we anticipate that what we care about might shift”? What if we opt to change our values?
The focus on values leads to philosophy. Rothman draws heavily on the work of Agnes Callard, a philosopher at the University of Chicago, who believes that life-altering decisions are not made suddenly but through a more gradual process: “Old Person aspires to become New Person.” Callard emphasizes that aspiration is different from ambition. Ambitious people know exactly why they’re doing something, e.g., taking a class to get a good grade or modeling different behavior to satisfy regulatory scrutiny. Aspirants, on the other hand, have a harder time because they have a less clear sense of their current activities’ value and can only hope their future selves can understand and appreciate it. “To aspire, Callard writes, is to judge one’s present-day self by the standards of a future self who doesn’t yet exist.”
Our Perspective
We can consider the change of an organization’s culture as the integration over time of the changes in all its members’ behaviors and values. We know that values underlie culture and significant cultural change requires shifting the actual (as opposed to the espoused) values of the organization. This is not easy. The organization’s more ambitious members will find it easier to get with the program; they know change is essential and are willing to adapt to keep their jobs or improve their standing. The merely aspiring will have a harder time. Because they lack a clear picture of the future organizational culture, they may be troubled by unexplored options, i.e., some different path or future that might be equally good or even better. They may learn that no matter how deeply they study the experience of others, they still don’t really know what they’re getting into. They don’t understand what the change experience will be like and how it will affect them. They may be frustrated to discover that modeling desired new behaviors does not help because they still feel like the same people in the old culture. Since personal change is not instantaneous, they may even get stuck somewhere between the old culture and the new culture.
Bottom line: Cultural change is harder for some people than others. This article is an easy read that offers an introduction to the personal dynamics associated with changing one’s outlook or values.
This book* is about biases that prevent us from making fact-based decisions. It is based on the author’s world-wide work as a doctor and public health researcher. We saw it on Bill Gates’ 2018 summer reading list.
Rosling discusses ten instincts (or reasons) why our individual worldviews (or mental models) are systematically wrong and prevent us from seeing situations are they truly are and making fact-based decisions about them.
Rosling mostly addresses global issues but the same instincts can affect our approach to work-related decision making from the enterprise level down to the individual. We briefly discuss each instinct and highlight how it may hinder us from making good decisions during everyday work and one-off investigations.
The gap instinct
This is “that irresistible temptation we have to divide all kinds of things into two distinct and often conflicting groups, with an imagined gap—a huge chasm of injustice—in between.” (p. 26) This is reinforced by our “strong dramatic instinct toward binary thinking . . .” (p. 42) The gap instinct can apply to our thinking about safety, e.g., in the Safety I mental model there is acceptable performance and intolerable performance, with no middle ground and no normal transitions back and forth. Rosling notes that usually there is no clear cleavage between two groups, even if it seems like that from the averages. We saw this in Dekker's analysis of health provider data (reviewed Oct. 29, 2018) where both favorable and unfavorable patient outcomes exhibited the same negative work process traits.
The negativity instinct
This is “our tendency to notice the bad more than the good.” (p. 51) We do not perceive improvements that are “too slow, too fragmented, or too small one-by-one to ever qualify as news.” (p. 54) “There are three things going on here: the misremembering of the past [erroneously glorifying the “good old days”]; selective reporting by journalists and activists; and the feeling that as long as things are bad it’s heartless to say they are getting better.” (p. 70) To tell the truth, we don’t see this instinct inside the nuclear world where facilities with long-standing cultural problems (i.e., bad) are constantly reporting progress (i.e., getting better) while their cultural conditions still remain unacceptable.
The straight line instinct
This is the expectation that a line of data will continue straight into the future. Most of you have technical training or exposure and know that accurate extrapolations can take many shapes including straight, s-bends, asymptotes, humps or exponential growth.
The fear instinct
“[F]ears are hardwired deep in our brains for obvious evolutionary reasons.” (p. 105) “The media cannot resist tapping into our fear instinct. It is such an easy way to grab our attention.” (p. 106) Rosling observes that hundreds of elderly people who fled Fukushima to escape radiation ended up dying “because of the mental and physical stresses of the evacuation itself or of life in evacuation shelters.” (p. 114) In other words, they fled something frightening (a perceived risk) and ended up in danger (a real risk). How often does fear, e.g., fear of bad press, enter into your organization’s decision making?
The size instinct
We overweight things that look big to us. “It is instinctive to look at a lonely number and misjudge its importance. It is also instinctive . . . to misjudge the importance of a single instance or an identifiable victim.” (p. 125) Does the nuclear industry overreact to some single instances?
The generalization instinct
“[T]he generalization instinct makes “us” think of “them” as all the same.” (p. 140) At the macro level, this is where the bad “isms” exist: racism, sexism, ageism, classism, etc. But your coworkers may practice generalization on a more subtle, micro level. How many people do you work with who think the root cause of most incidents is human error? Or somewhat more generously, human error, inadequate procedures and/or equipment malfunctions— but not the larger socio-technical system? Do people jump to conclusions based on an inadequate or incorrect categorization of a problem? Are categories, rather than facts, used as explanations? Are vivid examples used to over-glamorize alleged progress or over-dramatize poor outcomes?
The destiny instinct
“The destiny instinct is the idea that innate characteristics determine the destinies of people, countries, religions, or cultures.” (p. 158) Culture includes deep-seated beliefs, where feelings can be disguised as facts. Does your work culture assume that some people are naturally bad apples?
The single perspective instinct
This is preference for single causes and single solutions. It is the fundamental weakness of Safety I where the underlying attitude is that problems arise from individuals who need to be better controlled. Rosling advises us to “Beware of simple ideas and simple solutions. . . . Welcome complexity.” (p. 189) We agree.
The blame instinct
“The blame instinct is the instinct to find a clear, simple reason for why something bad has happened. . . . when things go wrong, it must be because of some bad individual with bad intentions. . . . This undermines our ability to solve the problem, or prevent it from happening again, . . . To understand most of the world’s significant problems we have to look beyond a guilty individual and to the system.” (p. 192) “Look for causes, not villains. When something goes wrong don’t look for an individual or a group to blame. Accept that bad things can happen without anyone intending them to. Instead spend your energy on understanding the multiple interacting causes, or system, that created the situation. Look for systems, not heroes.” (p. 204) We totally agree with Rosling’s endorsement of a systems approach.
The urgency instinct
“The call to action makes you think less critically, decide more quickly, and act now.” (p. 209) In a true emergency, people will fall back on their training (if any) and hope for the best. However, in most situations, you should seek more information. Beware of data that is relevant but inaccurate, or accurate but irrelevant. Be wary of predictions that fail to acknowledge that the future is uncertain.
Our Perspective
The series of decisions an organization makes is a visible artifact of its culture and its decision making process internalizes culture. Because of this linkage, we have long been interested in how organizations and individuals can make better decisions, where “better” means fact- and reality-based and consistent with the organization’s mission and espoused values.
We have reviewed many works that deal with decision making. This book adds value because it is based on the author’s research and observations around the world; it is not based on controlled studies in a laboratory or observations in a single organization. It uses very good graphics to illustrate various data sets, including changes, e.g., progress, over time.
Rosling believed “it has never been easier or more important for business leaders and employees to act on a fact-based worldview.” (p. 228) His book is engagingly written and easy to read. It is Rosling’s swan song; he died in 2017.
Bottom line: Rosling advocates for robust decision making, accurate mental models, and a systems approach. We like it.
* H. Rosling, O. Rosling and A.R. Rönnlund, Factfulness, 1st ed. ebook (New York: Flatiron, 2018).
