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Framing Complex Decisions


At the nation’s 18th busiest airport, Detroit Metro Airport is not immune to complex decision-making. Simple decisions can sometimes turn into much more complex issues and vice versa. Complex issues can seldom be solved within a single frame (Hoch, Kunreuther, & Gunther, 2001, p. 154). As I’ve learned, frames not only work as a tool to understand problems from different points of view, they can also provide clarity, especially when dealing with complex issues.
For example, take root cause analysis (RCA) and how simple methods of determine how and why something failed can be applied to the organization so that you can prevent the same mistake from happening again and again. As simple as the method is of asking why something failed, you’d think we were teaching skilled trades personnel Latin. Incorporating a change like RCA takes a lot of time and patience. They way in which we approached our teams to include RCA in their routines first involved identifying and analyzing all our constraints and assumptions. Obvious constraints were training materials, process updates and scheduling. But, the real constraint was in how we framed the reason why it was important for our teams to use RCA. This was a big a miss on leadership’s part and ultimately led to the implementation not being successful. We failed to really analyze our assumptions regarding how the workers would react to RCA. We assumed they wouldn’t outright resist using RCA, but as a result of the pent-up anger related to union negotiations, we just didn’t see it coming. Appreciate people’s emotional commitment to their frames, especially if core values are involved, people usually need considerable time to adapt (Hoch, Kunreuther, & Gunther, 2001, p. 154). Thus, my comparison in teaching RCA likened to teaching employees Latin. We failed to perceive how our framing would be received. People often cannot see or hear anything that lies outside their frames (Hoch, Kunreuther, & Gunther, 2001, p. 152). It really was like we were speaking Latin to a group that immediately and completely tuned us out.
The reason implementing RCA at an organization like mine is complex is because it involves so many different levels of engagement. Not only are we trying to convince senior leadership of the benefits to RCA and an overall total productive maintenance environment, but we also must gain the trust of the boots on the ground. Calling this a typical “managing up and down” situation, we must sell our ideas to both our leaders and unionized teams. This creates additional complexity when framing in both directions.
In retrospect, we should have framed RCA differently and used more of the yardstick analysis to frame how RCA would make the employees’ workdays better for them, rather than how it was best for the organization. Everyone loves to be a firefighter and get the glory with addressing emergencies, but the true measurement is preventing them before they start. Try to align your frames with those of others (Hoch, Kunreuther, & Gunther, 2001, p. 151). That was the real metric we could and should have used to frame the discussions with the teams.
Further, we also did not fully consider the implementation. We missed understanding what would happen if the employees completely resisted RCA. Of course, you really wouldn’t think that a group of professionals would thumb their noses at management and say no to a tool that would help them and the organization, but once again, we did not frame it correctly. Had we addressed this implementation properly, we would have identified the gap in our frame to the employees.
Effective leaders challenge old frames, envision bold new ones and contrast the two very clearly (Hoch, Kunreuther, & Gunther, 2001, p. 155). As I reflect more on the poor performance by leadership, including myself, it is clearer to me that we were, in fact, not very clear in our contrast between yet another tool we attempted to roll out to the teams and how this one was different. The views expressed by the skilled trades personal were undoubtedly skewed with negative bias towards management. This was the major consequence in the entire scenario and proves the point about framing our message and decisions appropriately.
Use this feedback to improve your frames (Hoch, Kunreuther, & Gunther, 2001, p. 154). I most certainly will!
References
Hoch, S., Kunreuther, H., & Gunther, R. (2001). Wharton on making decisions. New York: Wiley.

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