Yeah, But…
SCIO Decision Intelligence Framework
“Yeah, but…” is the elephant in the room that can stop quality decisions dead in the tracks.
Yeah, but… can adversely affect decision-making and, thus, value delivery. This happens when the decision-maker's motivations are misaligned with the problem-solvers.
I’ll never forget one pivotal moment in my career when I received a “yeah, but…”. I still carry the scars.
I led a small team on a months-long asset lifecycle performance and cost engineering study modelling different operating conditions and maintenance strategies. We were doing this because our engineering leader was concerned our costs were increasing and our future outage durations and/or production might be adversely impacted. A new engineering leader was appointed partway through our work.
When I presented our report, I informed the new leader that if we continued to manage the way we had been, and with several operating characteristics about to change, we were heading for big trouble over the next many years. Our model was grounded against asset inspection observations. We evaluated a matrix of operational conditions against solution alternatives, calculating the NPV costs and benefits for each, complete with ranges signalling our uncertainty. We had high confidence in the model and the future outcomes it was helping us predict. Our recommended solution was to change to a highly proactive maintenance strategy at a higher cost than our current spend, but the expected benefits would exceed the costs by a considerable margin. Our problem-solving assessment was reasonable and practical. My recommendation wasn’t a gold-plate solution. It was solid work, among the best of my career.
My leader had been listening attentively. When I was done with my pitch, he looked me in the eyes, gave me a wry smile, and said, “Yeah, but that’s not how we make decisions around here .” When I asked why, he responded, “We don’t use NPV. We have spending constraints, and the timeframes we manage are much shorter.” I was dumbfounded. His perceived threat of enterprise financial and time constraints killed the project.
The leader and, by extension, the organization did nothing different. The decision was not to decide, to avoid the decision altogether. The problem-solving and decision-making set was ignored. The asset strategy didn’t change. I recognized a danger and silently said, “Let’s see how this plays out.” Over the next five years, I watched a slow-motion train wreck. Every operational risk we modelled (and one more we hadn’t) was realized. Plant availability and reliability plummeted.
Ultimately, the plant had to respond with a reliability improvement project by taking additional unplanned outages at incredibly high costs to restore asset health and condition. I estimated the lost production cost the company around $230M in earnings, financially material to the company. That number has been emblazoned into my memory. Heads rolled (some of the wrong ones, unfortunately). Luckily, this occurred during strong market prices, and they could spend their way out of trouble. The company might not have survived if it had occurred five years later during soft prices.
The lesson here isn’t an “I told you so.” The real lesson is about misaligned motivations. During the five-year slow-motion train wreck, it became clear the engineering leader and his executive vice president had an almost infinite operational risk tolerance. They took bold steps to secure strong short-term earnings and, in so doing, gave up significant long-term value. Each did very well for themselves, with large bonuses on their generous salary that only encouraged more risk-taking. That is until the poor results inevitably came. They survived this mess for a while but eventually were sent packing for other reasons.
I think about the situation often because it is such a rich lesson in operations and asset management mediocrity. Could we have avoided that whole mess? Yes. Would the investment to avoid that cost have been worth it? Yes. Poor decision; poor outcome. I know this situation happens repeatedly with varying outcomes in many organizations.
My problem-solving team did our work aligned with the business values and culture set by the original engineering leader. This leader often said, “What’s the right thing to do for the company?” to cut through inter-departmental conflicts or self-serving behaviour. However, another leader with vastly different motivations made the final (non-) decision when our work was done.
People don’t wear their motivations on their sleeve. They are hidden and become apparent only through their behaviours and actions. The sources of those motivations are based on their beliefs shaped by their experiences, incentives, desires and fears. It takes good change management to reshape individual and organizational cultural beliefs in an operations and asset management context. That doesn’t come easy because beliefs have strong bonds forged over time. Spotting motivational misalignments is the first step before alignment can occur.
The unmentionable, the elephant in the room, and the decision quality killer are misaligned motivations. When you experience a “Yeah, but…” I strongly advise you to see, think and decide your action carefully. Do what’s right for the organization seeking to deliver maximum value aligned with the shared goals & objectives, values and risk appetite.
There are many reasons why decision-maker motivations might not align with the problem-solvers. The result, unfortunately, can adversely impact the organization’s decision-making quality with massive value leakage.
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