Making Good Decisions

Course details

This course aligns decision making with the opportunities and risks we are responsible for. Providing a structured method to map process to risk and opportunity, identify gaps, and balance value with investment to guide good decisions. A decision alone is insufficient to achieve an outcome. The decision must be supported by a workable plan for implementation. The combination of analysis, decision and planning is what produces results. We rehearse the use of these tools, so that delegates leave the course capable of functioning beyond confirmation bias and group think, capable of starting from a blank sheet of paper if necessary and building functioning businesses or teams.

What's Special About This Course?

This course is run by Howard Thomas, a highly accredited and professional chemical engineer who has worked on hydrocarbon installations globally and delivered multi-million dollar competency programs for the new LNG assets in Australia under the Clough AMEC banner. As well as designing the programs, Howard also delivered the foundational training from physics and chemistry to full scale LNG optimization. He is widely recognized in his field, and being pursued by many energy companies. You will have the chance to not only learn the fundamentals of practical process safety but have a chance to speak and network!

Also, remember that this course is operated by Worley, a key and widely recognized player in the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC).

Course Overview

We traditionally rely on documented justification and recognition of the outcome (confirmation bias) rather than measured decisions. Through documented justification we make the mistake of relying solely on the opinions of experienced people, instead of testing different options. It is therefore unsurprising that many common problems occur and we seem unable to learn. Even in simple situations we run the risk of confirmation bias and group think. This course introduces structure to decision making.
Training and education are not the same thing. Repetition, the result of training, will not cut it in changing circumstances. Our knowledge level must be sufficient to allow us to identify new unknowns and to develop or commission models to help us understand these unknowns or our inability to accept the risk.

You will Learn How to

Making good decisions is about increasing wisdom and reducing complexity. In this course you will learn how to:

• Identify opportunities and risks
• Assess the current state of readiness
• Carry out mathematical decision analysis (for dummies)
• Construct a plan and carry out programme evaluation and review
• Understand human cognition and the factors that influence it
• Identify cognitive bias
• Use complexity science to identify constraints
• Apply the theory of constraints to workflow and automation
• Understand information science
• Apply different technologies to simplify decision making
• Apply business process engineering techniques to communicate clarity arising from good decision

Topics

We will investigate the structure of good decisions and implementation and compare good practice to common practice. We will examine human cognition and the factors that influence it. We will study the complication that technology has wrought upon industry and establish methods to measure the value of competing ideas.

We'll consider methods to simplify decision making through the correct application of technology. We'll follow good decision making with ensuring the decision is effectively implemented. Creating a complete strategy, plan and performance cycle is necessary to make sure big decisions and big commitments pay off and we learn as we go. Updated on 05 May, 2019