February 2005 Pre Dinner Presentaion - February 8th, 2005
Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People Where And Why Things Go Wrong By Darrel Untereker, Medtronic
People make decisions every day. Most decisions turn out to be good ones. But some turn out to be really bad ones. Understanding why bad decisions are made will help us improve our decision making process.
Things can go wrong in several ways. We make mistakes. We should know from experience not to repeat errors, but we make then anyway. When we change one item for one reason, it affects another item. It may affect a totally unrelated area that we did not anticipate would change. Implementation of new technology before it is totally tested can be risky. We ignore early warning signs by not listening to people’s observations. Darrel emphasized that two large contributions to bad decisions are assuming that mass production will be as easy to make as a few prototypes models and we overestimate our knowledge. Both assumptions often result in finding our mistakes late into the project when repairs become very costly.
There are ways to avoid problems. We need to identify potential risks in the early stages of development. Then prioritize the risks from most important too least important. Always refer to the risk priority list as the project develops, always working on the next risk on the list. New people with fresh perspectives and ideas will see potential errors. Utilize the best technology at the beginning of a project will help in making good decisions. Understanding the management business view also helps us avoid problems. We need to understand what the business goal and customer focus is before we proceed.
Darrel defined the decision making process into four sections:
- 1. Starting point
- - Formulate a common objective
- - Record what factors are known and what needs to be explored
- - Understand the project from the business, customer, and team views
- - Accept that all the individuals on the team have different views based on their gender, age, upbringing, past employment, and life experiences
- 2. Creative phase
- - Brainstorm with an open mind
- - Explore alternatives
- - Assess the information and the environment
- - Take the time to make sound decisions
- 3. Evaluation phase
- - Generate and analyze the data
- - Recognize and manage team and individual biases
- - Understand constraints dealing with time, people, goals, empowerment, and costs
- - Interact objectively with others
- 4. End result
- - Make a decision based on calculated risks.
By thinking critically, we must be aware of barriers so we can keep an open mind as we proceed in our decision making process.