A632.3.4.RB - Reflections on Decision Making

A632.3.4.RB - Reflections on Decision Making

Shoemaker and Russo (in Hoch) discuss the hazards associated with "frame blindness" and how to guard against them. 

Discuss three ways you can avoid "framing traps" and provide a detailed example of each from your life experience. 

Hoch says that [b]eing unaware of our frames poses an enormous risk. All too often, managers look out at the world through one mental window and fail to notice the views offered by other windows. (Hoch, et al., 2001) The first example I have to share is of the Illusion of Completeness – the idea that we have the complete picture of what is going on. This week I was able to have my first one-on-one with my new manager. She and I didn’t really have an agenda for this meeting, just a “get to know you” and I suspect to “feel each other out.” Back tracking a bit, when I first learned that I was going to be moving to a different team, purchasing standards instead of the big sexy structures, I was not happy about it. I was almost belligerent in my internally forming opinions, blind to what the real reasons for the transition were and the opportunities for growth that were clearly visible. I was ornery and stubborn because I had finally found a team and a niche that I enjoyed again. (Moving to Boeing South Carolina had been a rough transition.) Forgetting that change is the only constant at Boeing and that with each change I grow in my overall knowledge of the organization, I did the mental version of crossing my arms over my chest, sticking out my lower lip and pouting like a petulant child. This was not an overly becoming look for me. In the midst of all of this, I found out that my new manager was a young temp-manager I immediately rolled my eyes and came up with all of these negative thoughts and reasons why this was going to be awful.

“I don’t want to have to break in another new up and coming manager.”

“She looks old enough to be my daughter – ugh.”

“Why me?”

All of these things reflecting back to me my insecurities – personal and professional. For all of my talk about women in business needing to build each other up and support one another, I sure jumped on the “bash the new girl” bandwagon easily. I was so ashamed of myself. I recognized that ugliness for what it was and set out changing my attitude. I needed to walk the talk and stop feeling sorry for myself.

Back to the one-on-one I had with my new manager on Monday: She is awesome. She has a great sense of humor, is legit smart and has a wealth of experience. We talked about leadership as women in business and what that means to us. We talked about this class and how to make decisions with all stakeholders in mind. She talked to me about pointers on how to frame my questions and conversations to our suppliers. We talked about frames and how they related to decision making. I repeat, she is awesome. I could not have asked for a better manager – temp or no. I am optimistic and open minded about this change again. I have also seen my ugly frame blindness up close and really need to keep that side of me in check. It isn’t dignified or authentic.  I definitely should have framed this situation in a more mature and organizationally minded place. Be on guard about the false sense of completeness that any frame will offer. Try to see the gaps and limitations of the frame as well as why it fits. (Hoch, et al., 2001)

Another example of frame blindness - specifically Overconfidence about Our View - happened about eleven years ago. I was working for an electrical components warehouse as a vendor managed inventory coordinator with three specialists under me, and over 60 customers to deliver parts to – most of them weekly – and the route was from Bellingham, WA (border of US/Canada) and Vancouver, WA (almost to the Oregon border). It was exhilarating – we were experimenting with different ways to use RFID tags and scanning to control inventory and to give the customer more visibility on their usage metrics – helping them forecast their needs. I was on top of the world, I thought I was untouchable, my boss had just given me the biggest raise I’d ever had to that point and I had an incredible amount of autonomy to do my job the way I saw fit. The only problem is that I only saw this job from my frame. I didn’t see it from the customer’s frames, or the organizations frames. I had tunnel-vision and was zooming through that tunnel at top speed not caring if there was a train heading my way. I made a couple mistakes in ordering material that put the warehouse in a bind and while I apologized and owned my mistake, it still didn’t bode well with the manager of the warehouse. I can see now that if I had looked through his frame – I would have seen that using his resources that were already tasked with other time-sensitive work – was a hardship on him and that I should have used better discretion when creating big orders for them to pull. That was just one of a few critical mistakes I made thinking that no one mattered more than my work. I was asked to step down from being the coordinator and back to being a specialist. I was absolutely thrown. It took me a long time to be able to look at the whole situation objectively and I could see where I was wrong. I could have framed that whole time as being the coordinator much more objectively. I should have framed it with the organization in mind – been a better steward to the individual departments I impacted and worked to ensure that everything I did was as beneficial to all stakeholders as possible. Most of us suffer from a well-documented tendency to overestimate what we know, which contributes to our tendency to overvalue the relevance of our own frames and undervalue the relevance of others. (Hoch, et al., 2001)

Both of these examples remind me of how far I have to go. The realization that I was reverting back to a negative reaction to a new leader made me understand that being a leader is about constant work on who we are and how we frame ourselves to align with our organizations. Just when I think I’m on a good path – a positive path to leadership – I stumble and have to pick gravel out of my ego for a while so that I can see how far I still have to go. I’m glad that I realized my reaction to my new manager was more about me and less about her before I met with her one-on-one. Viewing the world through just our own individual frames is not only sure to cause frame blindness but it will inhibit our growth as leaders and decision makers. Stepping outside of our personal frames is essential to growing as a person and as a leader.

References:

Hoch, S. J., Kunreuther, H., Gunther, R. E., & Wharton School. (2001). Wharton on making decisions. New York: Wiley.

A632.3.3.RB - Framing Complex Decisions

A632.3.3.RB - Framing Complex Decisions

Describe the 3 different tools or approaches for dealing with complex, multiple stakeholders, and environmental decision processes in your organization. Reflect on changes or alterations you would consider to ensure the most successful process possible. Describe the elements in detail and make clear the available options and consequences.

In my organization – and probably enterprise-wide at Boeing – Lean tools are used to frame problem solving and even problem identifying. We use visualization tools like a fishbone or ishikowa diagram, the 5-why, and value stream mapping to see a problem from a bird’s eye view. We take in all stakeholders and what their needs would be – what their frames are – and try to come up with a valid and reasonable problem statement. We form workshops that include the many stakeholders and work out a model of a solution. These workshops can get heated and the solution one stakeholder thinks would work the best might be another stakeholder’s worst nightmare. These workshops and tools help us work with everyone’s perspective and needs in the forefront of the solutions. Not everyone gets what they want and sacrifice and compromise are very much a part of these workshops but from my experiences in these workshops, learning more about frames I would have never even considered helps me going forward with my decision making.

One of the workshops I talked about in this week’s discussion board was the 737 skin plate flow workshop. We were working to reduce the flow to increase output in an effort to make sure we had capacity for the next rate increases. The solution we came up with involved new crane requirements and at the last minute we realized that we hadn’t included the crane crew in the solution. We got the crane lead in and found out that our solution would actually make their job harder. We didn’t have all of the frames in view and spent a lot of time on a solution that was ineffective and practically impossible. From that experience, I always try to think about every stakeholder – every job we’ll need to happen for our solution to work or even be presentable.

There are a lot more than three tools that we use from the Lean toolbox. The ones I mentioned are the most popular. One of the more recent ones is the Boeing Problem Solving (BPS) method and the RCCA – Root Cause Corrective Action model. The BPS is actually a way to determine what Lean tool is the right tool for the situation. Here is a link to a PDF that shows a visual of this tool. All of these tools are used in an effort to link our many stakeholders in the decision and problem solving aspects of our organization. By being consistent with the use of these Lean tools, we can be sure that the entire Boeing enterprise is using the same brain when it comes to being proactive and innovative in our problem solving.

References:

Boeing Problem Solving (BPS) link: https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/228582/pdfs/Whitepaper_Boeing%20Problem%20Solving%20Model_RCA_Final.pdf?_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_XSNOVlUsTOhJQ5ECypT0sxRKujPDDxk1Iv_Dp5MBvXiKoDnzJd_Fsdc_nWjMb1ImKcr3ZkM_fiwMPSzgFHOtP5SS73w&_hsmi=38509366

Hoch, S. J., Kunreuther, H., Gunther, R. E., & Wharton School. (2001). Wharton on making decisions. New York: Wiley.

A632.2.3.RB - Sheena Iyengar: How to Make Choosing Easier

A632.2.3.RB - Sheena Iyengar: How to Make Choosing Easier

Sheena Iyengar has four methodologies to help with choice overload. Choice overload is that feeling you get when you go into a kitchen store at the outlet mall and immediately start sweating – you had no idea there were that many whisk options. No idea. Her first recommendation is to cut the choices down. If there are fourteen whisks in front of you but you know that you are going to be using it in a very expensive non-stick coated pan, you can cut all of those that are metal. The metal ones may end up scratching your expensive pan. Now you are down to four choices and suddenly the task is much simpler. Her second technique is concretization. That in order for people to understand the differences between the choices, they have to be able to understand the consequences associated with each choice, and that the consequences need to be felt in a vivid sort of way, in a very concrete way. (Iyengar, 2011) This kind of goes back to the whisks – we already know that the consequence of buying a metal whisk is that it might damage our expensive pan. The third technique is to categorize the choices. We can handle more categories than we can handle choices. (Iyengar, 2011). If I’m looking at fourteen whisks, I can categorize them in a couple ways: tall or short, plastic or metal, round or oval. Instead of having to choose from fourteen individual things, I can choose from two or three categories. It’s a series of ways to eliminate what I don’t want from what I actually want. The fourth technique is to condition for complexity. It turns out we can actually handle a lot more information than we think we can, we've just got to take it a little easier. We have to gradually increase the complexity. (Iyengar, 2011) By eliminating the ten whisks we know we don’t want or can’t use, we have four choices. We can select the perfect whisk and feel confident in our choice and in turn ready for looking at something a little more complex – picking out a new wooden spoon or a paring knife set.

Personally, when I get overwhelmed with choices – like every day at the cafeteria – I mentally cut the things I know I don’t want. Since I recently got braces, I start with the things I know I can’t eat right now like nuts or crunchy things and sticky/chewy things. Right now eating a sandwich is tricky because it’s hard to bite down on things. So I can eliminate the sub shop and some of the grill items. The salad bar is usually a good bet because I can load up the lettuces with legumes, cooked squash, chopped eggs, mushrooms, and other less crunchy things. I can also go to the area that serves mashed potatoes and meatloaf or other meat that I can cut up and chew easier. Although when the gyro guy comes it is all bets off – it is worth the trouble of getting gyro out of my braces to eat it. I suppose that would be the concretization technique. I know that I’ll have to get all of the gyro out of my braces but it’s worth this consequence to enjoy a gyro. Eating a salt-water taffy doesn’t appeal to me as much so the consequence of trying to work that taffy out of my teeth is not worth it so that choice would be easy. However, if I was going to do a working lunch and had to eat lunch while in a meeting, I wouldn’t choose a gyro. That would be awful. I would probably choose a tomato soup and pudding.

These are kind of silly examples but I think when you figure out which way works best for you when making smaller choices, you can apply it to most of the other big decisions. For me, narrowing down options, or using the cutting technique, goes a long way in my decision making. Iyengar used the example of buying a car on-line. I have gone down that road before and have gotten hung up on the details and choices. Now though, before I shop for things on-line like that, I narrow down the things that are more important to me – like the features of air conditioning, power windows/seats, and gas mileage. I don’t really care what color it is, or if it has cloth or leather interior. I also don’t care what kind of wheels it has or rims. I prefer four doors because I don’t want people having to do weird yoga poses to get into the backseat. The other choices I can use the default options on because I have cut them out of my “must have” categories.

As a member of an organization, I think it is better to make choices based on concretization. Understanding the consequences of a choice in an organization can make it easier to know the right thing to do. Last year, our organization went through the heart-wrenching union vote. Our mechanics voted no and we stayed union-free. This choice was made because of the consequences they knew or assumed would happen to them if Boeing SC became a union shop. They knew that the support teams would have less access to helping production and that suddenly the gap between hourly employee and manager would keep deeper because there would be a union steward there too. Not that all of the consequences would have been negative – but understanding what would happen once the vote took place helped a lot of the mechanics make their choice. Everything we do within an organization can have an effect on someone else – choices can impact employees and departments on many levels. I think it’s very important to know what the consequences are so even if you still have to make a less desirable choice, you can still prepare for the inevitable consequence.  

References:

Hoch, S. J., Kunreuther, H., Gunther, R. E., & Wharton School. (2001). Wharton on making decisions. New York: Wiley.

Iyengar, S. (2011) How to make choosing easier. TEDTalks. TEDSalon NY2011. https://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_choosing_what_to_choose/transcript#t-7949

A632.1.4.RB - Multistage Decision-Making

Dynamic decision analysis is looking at the trade-offs between the short run and long run consequences of current actions. (Hoch, et al., 2001)  As leaders, we are constantly looking at the possible outcomes and immediate expectations which are sometimes at odds with one another. For example, recently at work we had a shipping issue that required two-weeks to resolve. Production told us that we had two days to resolve it before it would negatively impact their schedule. We finagled, begged, pleaded, and otherwise moved mountains to get the issue resolved in time. It turned out that by rushing this process, the part in question was damaged beyond repair and it ended up taking a month to get the part fabricated and shipped again. The possible outcomes that we problem solved for did not include rushing the order and having it crushed accidently. In did include making sure that we took the time to have the right shipper handle it – one we normally used and who understood how to package and handle the part. The immediate expectations were that we needed to do whatever we could to get the part here within 48-hours no matter the cost. We rushed the process and ended up costing us he expediting fees, a new part, and the line stoppage of production. In the end, we were the ones responsible for getting the part safely to the factory and we failed. The short run consequences of doing the right thing and stalling production a few days to ensure the part arrived safely and in one piece were that production would be screaming at us for two weeks or until the part arrived. The long run consequence was that the plane would be built and the whole thing would be forgotten in a rush of new “emergencies.” We must plan to learn. Don’t forget that the decisions one makes now can be strategically used to help make better decisions in the future. (Hoch, et al., 2001)

Precisely measuring how good (or bad) we are at making dynamic decisions, however, turns out to be more difficult than one might presume. The reason is that dynamic decision theory does not provide an absolute benchmark for what optimal behavior should be in all situations. (Hoch, et al., 2001) When my husband and I set about buying a house last year, we had a fairly realistic set of “wants” and “don’t wants” in mind. We even wrote out a list and brought it with us when we toured possible houses. These “wants” included a big open kitchen, nice sized yard for a garden, big closets and bathrooms, and a garage or shop for my husband to work out of. We also wanted an older house with wooden floors and “personality” – no cookie-cutter houses for us! After three months of searching and two offers that fell flat, we found a place. I don’t know if it was because we were looking for houses in May in South Carolina and the heat finally got to us but when we saw the huge in-ground pool we were sold. We put in an offer almost immediately. This house was older and in an older neighborhood with virtually no HOA and gorgeous old oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. It also had wooden floors. That’s it. The house we bought had roughly 1% of the things we had written down as desirable attributes – but it had a pool…a big cool blue pool that was all we thought about while we were waiting to close on the place. (Okay, all I thought about; my husband was diligently going over inspection reports and being meticulous about checking flood records and other house values in the area.)

The short run consequences of our decision to buy the house with tiny closets and an inadequate kitchen would be that we would enjoy the pool all summer long and grill outdoors. The long run consequences are that we are now in a seemingly perpetual state of remodel. Slowly though, the house is becoming more and more ours. In this case, we started our search for a house with all the intents of pragmatic adults and ended up lured in by the sparkling blue water of our pool. The conclusions found at the end of the chapter would definitely help me in my decision making process but I’m afraid it wouldn’t have changed us buying this house. That decision was really made with our hearts because we really do love this house – it always had the potential to be the house we wanted. [T]here is little tertiary evidence of widespread failures of intuition… [g]iven this track record, the temptation is to conclude that our intuitions will be sufficient for all dynamic decision problems. (Hoch, et al., 2001) Obviously, buying this house could still prove to be a huge mistake because human intuition is fallible and therein lies all the risk.

References:

Hoch, S. J., Kunreuther, H., Gunther, R. E., & Wharton School. (2001). Wharton on making decisions. New York: Wiley.