A632.9.3.RB - Role of Emotion in Decision Making

A632.9.3.RB - Role of Emotion in Decision Making

In this video, Prof. Baba Shiv of Stanford University speaks to the importance of emotion in decision making, particularly as related to confidence. After watching this video, reflect on two situations; one, in which you were extremely confident of the outcome and what your attitude was towards the subject; and second, a situation in which you were less confident or not so confident of the outcome. Based on this module's readings and this video write a reflection blog detailing the situations above and describing the role emotion played in decision making. Include what emotional reactions you experienced for each scenario.

I am not a confident person. I second guess myself at every turn. I’m not unexperienced or incapable, I’m just not confident. This stems from times when I was overly confident, “John Wayne-ed” something and it blew up in my face. I should not just “wing it” – that rarely works out well. So, I’ve had trouble navigating between completely self-confident to the point of arrogance and just not wanting to say anything for fear that I’m wrong – that I don’t have the data or experience and just stay quiet. This has been a problem in my career at Boeing because while I’ve been at this company almost 7 years – which is normally enough time to feel confident in most daily decisions at any other job – I’ve changed positions within Boeing almost yearly since 2013 so I always feel like the new kid. Like I don’t have over 40 years of life experience or nearly 30 years of work experience – at least 15 years of actual supply chain experience. I act like I just walked in off the street and like I don’t have any authority at all to make any bigger decision than what I’m having for lunch. This is probably not really what you want this reflection assignment to be about but it is what this week’s lesson on emotion in decision making – confidence – has made me reflect on.

The last time I felt completely confident about a job was when I was the vendor managed inventory coordinator for an electrical equipment company and it ended with the whole “world series of warehouse baseball” situation that I’ve written about before – the job where I felt like I was untouchable and my decisions as a leader were infallible. I was so very very wrong and the fallout from that experience still haunts me almost 11 years later. My attitude toward my position and the confidence I had then was misplaced. I was young and had no leadership experience except that of the leaders I followed. Most of them were old school bosses who knew how to bark but not how to lead. I thought I needed to bark too and barking got results and these results built up my confidence. Until it didn’t. Today, I have small bouts of confidence that happen when I am completely sure about the data and I don’t bark about things. I ask questions and I listen. When I do have those moments of clarity and confidence, I feel good about things. Last year I was in charge of scheduling the work for b-deck on the 787 build. This area is where the water tanks are stored in the belly of the airplane and there are many tubes and connections that have to be made between potable water systems and then again many connections with the waste water systems. Because that part of the build was highly susceptible to customer choices, the build plan varied weekly. When leadership wanted to try and lean out our build process, they started to look at what they called bar chart (schedule) effectivity. The numbers needed to be above 85% and mine were sometimes 44% and sometimes 98% - it just depended on what jet we were building and for whom we were building it. Leadership saw one of my bar chart schedules and it was at 38% effectivity. They immediately wanted to cut my team from 14 to 7. And in normal circumstances, I can understand why – the numbers on that one build showed that we didn’t need all of those people. But I had to explain to them that my build was unique and that the effectivity changed every week. If they took half my team, they would be setting them up for failure when we had another big complex build. I gathered all of my averages, my examples and was fairly confident that I was doing the right thing. I engaged with my build team and asked the mechanics for data to help build my case to keep as many of the team together as possible. No one would be losing their jobs regardless but the team would have been severed in half. We fought the good fight with leadership all the way up to the director of the program. I explained the situation over and over again and became very confident in the data and what was needed to be successful. It wasn’t a popular fight – I was often at odds with my own lead and manager but I believed that what I was doing was right. In the end, we lost three people to other teams but we kept most of the core people on the team together. I didn’t feel confident in myself but I knew that the issue was important and meaningful enough to act more confident than I felt – but not arrogant. It takes me longer now – to gain confidence with things like that. I don’t trust myself when I feel overly confident – it makes me check myself and double check. Like when you leave the house and check a couple of times to make sure you didn’t forget anything. That’s the relationship I have with confidence in making decisions at work. I have to keep checking my pockets to make sure I have everything I need for the day.

References:

Shiv, B (2011). Brain research at Stanford: Decision making. Retrieved from:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRKfl4owWKc