Despite extensive safety training, when workers are making decisions on the shop floor – even life-threatening and business critical decisions – they sometimes let emotions cloud their judgment. Why? What are we doing wrong?
We have to dive deep into the nuances of the human decision-making circuitry to understand this conundrum and craft an effective solution. Imagine you are buying a new car. You want to make the most rational, objective choice possible. You don’t want emotion to get in the way of doing the responsible thing for your family. So you do your homework, researching every model your family is interested in. You find out the dealer’s invoice price, the mileage, the JD Powers durability rating, the EPA environmental rating, leg room, trunk capacity, even the number of cup holders. One model is better in mileage and durability, but is worse in leg room, trunk capacity and price. A second model is better in price and leg room, but has a small trunk and gets terrible mileage. A third model is second best all the way across. Which one is the best fit? You know the scores, but which attribute(s) takes precedence?