Drilling advances

	Vol. 229 No. 6
LES SKINNER, PE, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, LSKINNER@SBCGLOBAL.NET

Decision-making traps

Recently, I took a training course to learn about how to analyze new prospects and proposals. The course was excellent in spurring thought, but one of the most striking portions of the curriculum involved how people become trapped during the evaluation process. Here are seven of the traps presented. I don’t know who penned these originally, but I would gladly credit the author if I knew. This is good stuff:

Anchoring trap. In this trap we see or hear information that is used to anchor our decisions. Once anchored, the decision is made and cannot be rescinded-it is set in concrete. The obvious cure for this trap is to question the data or to look at it from a different perspective. If the data is faulty, so is the decision.

Status quo trap. This is the “Don’t rock the boat” trap and it often occurs in situations where highly opinionated management has already steered the decision process. Decision making is often reduced to rubber-stamping by those lacking the courage to question management. Avoiding this trap often requires breaking the paradigm, something that may have some nasty consequences. If one chooses to rock the boat, he or she had better be right!

Sunk cost trap. Here decisions are made to justify past decisions. New decisions are often formed as a defensive measure to cover up poor performance or bad results. The result is that good money is spent after bad. The cure: Admit the mistake, accept the consequences and get back on track.

Confirming evidence trap. This is a data manipulation game. Data is pursued that supports a decision or position. Data that does not support the position is avoided. Research is not objective and the scientific method is ignored. The only data used is that which justifies a position that was decided before the process began. The remedy is to consider 100% of the data and let the numbers guide the decision, not the reverse.

Framing trap. This one gets a bit complicated. This trap involves framing an issue or question so that the outcome is influenced. Many political choices fall into this trap. So do a number of polls. For example, I was asked once to answer this question, “Is it better to support government food allotments to poor families or to let them starve?” Clearly, the former answer is the choice by the way the question was framed. There were no other alternatives offered, so the only reasonable response available is the one the pollsters predetermined as the preferred choice. Re-framing the situation and allowing the decision to be reached from an objective viewpoint is the remedy.

Overconfidence trap. We love to collect and analyze data. It’s part of being a curious individual, and most humans are curious. Sometimes, however, we confuse data volume with data accuracy. Engineers are particularly susceptible to this trap. We collect, sort, graph and analyze data over and over again to the extent that we begin to believe ourselves. An old friend of mine says that we are prone to rubbing numbers together trying to generate some heat when the entire data set may be faulty. The cure for this is to challenge the input from the beginning and not confuse detail with accuracy.

Prudence trap. Being on the safe side is good advice if one is an aircraft pilot, a nuclear power plant operator, an electrician, a fireman or a police officer. Taking chances in certain situations is something that should be avoided. However, the oil industry is founded on taking certain risks. If we were not willing to take a chance, we would never have made any money-no guts, no blue chips. No investment is ever 100% sure; every person that has purchased a stock is aware of this. Staying on the beaten path limits the choices available and traps the person into looking only at a portion of the alternatives.

Being somewhat cynical about past decisions during drilling, I decided to add a few more traps to the list:

“We must do something” trap. This is when the urgency to perform overcomes the capability of making good choices. It is often powered by fear that not pursuing some course of action will result in retribution from on high. So we push forward without thinking through all the choices. We just grab the decision that is most convenient. Avoiding this trap requires thinking through all the potential outcomes and making choices that reduce the number and severity of bad results.

“Doing the best we can with the light we’ve got to see by” trap. This trap is often quoted as justification for poor data gathering. Restated, it is an admission that the decision was made haphazardly with minimal input. I have worked for people who made snap decisions, based on “experience,” only to see those decisions haunt them for years. Safety is often compromised by this decision type.

Forgetfulness trap. How often have we heard some fool say, “A hundred years from now, nobody will know the difference.” While that statement may be true, ignoring consequences is like leaving the seat belt unfastened. It is scant justification for poor planning. Some things will be remembered 100 years from now and beyond. Think of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in Russia. How about the Exxon Valdez tanker spill in Alaska? Believing that poor decisions will simply be forgotten is naive. Folks that work in the “oil bidness” have historically had long memories. There is a certain supply company in West Texas that still hasn’t gotten any business from me in over 30 years over a bad experience I had with them.

What does all this have to do with drilling? Plenty. Drilling is a multi-part process and we make decisions through every portion of the well from preliminary well designs to logging the last hole section. Some decisions have a significant impact on drilling time and cost. Take, for example, bit selection. The wrong choice means reduced penetration rate, additional cost, extra trips, directional control problems and poor performance. With spread costs what they are today, good decision making while drilling is an absolute necessity.