Decision Making & Judegment

Judgment

Judgement is when we need to decide which option is best in the current situation, when rules may not give the best outcome on their own.

If everything was only rule based decision making, imagine how chaotic things could get on the road or in the air. For example if the speed zone was 100kmh, but there were hundreds of people walking on the  edge of the road near an event, following the rules and not using judgment to slow down would place many people in severe danger.

Judgement allows us to select outcomes that may be better than only following exact rules. It also allows us to make good decisions when there are no known rules.

This is not advocating you break any rules. When we are talking about rules here we mean in the context of the example given. For example if we made decisions solely like a computer algorithm with pre programmed rules and decisions, then if the algorithm was incomplete, rules based decisions could allow for very poor decisions.

Be warned, bad judgement can also cause errors and accidents and often does.

 

Decisions

Decisions in their simplest form are when we have to choose from more than one option.

In flying we are required to make many decisions, some often in extremely quick succession, some dependent on other decisions and many involving risk assessment as part of the decision. It is impossible and unnecessary to learn everything about each of these processes.

What you do need to understand is how the basic process works and that it often involves assessing risk and outcomes.

  1. We encounter a problem eg: cloud blocking our planned flight level
  2. We observe or assess the problem – and notice its about 2000 feet above and below the planned flight
  3. We create options – to go over, under, around or turnback
  4. We assess each option, starting with the most desirable options
    1. We assess the risk
    2. We assess other factors, such as fuel required, time, difficulty, etc
    3. We assess the likely outcome, and chance of success
  5. We make a decision we think is best in our circumstances using decisions and judgment
  6. We take action
  7. We review that action later in flight if necessary and alter the decision or make a new decision
  8. We review our major decision in our post flight review