Zero-Defect Decision Making

 


If you're interviewing candidates whom you really seem to like, what sorts of questions would you ask to draw out negative information?

I'd ask them tough questions and try to make them think very hard before they spoke. I'd try to get them to relate some of the toughest decisions they've had to make or ask them questions that would tax and perplex them.

However, if I don't think the person would be a good fit at ATP, I'll try to throw some softball questions in, just to get the person to relax. At that point I'll attempt to challenge the interviewee to try to measure his or her ability to think and articulate thoughts. Communication skills and thoughtful answers that demonstrate knowledge and experience can quickly overcome first impressions.


Have you ever made a mistake in hiring?

Yes, there have certainly been some people that, in hindsight, I should have questioned more. I probably would have learned that the person wasn't a good fit.


Have you made business decisions based on information that you should have listened to more carefully?

All the time. I'm never happy about the way I listen. I wish that I could force myself to listen more carefully all the time.


What kinds of mistakes do you think you make when you do err?

There are times when I have made assumptions based on what a person has said, and those assumptions later turned out to be invalid. I wish that I could have asked more questions. But I think even though there are decisions that I have made that I would acknowledge weren't the best ones in hindsight, I've never looked back. Decision making is a forward-looking process. You have to be comfortable enough with the decisions that you've made to cut and run and move on.

You always have to look ahead, not at the what-ifs. And to the extent you make a mistake, you need to simply do your best to fix it.


That would presume that most mistakes are fixable.

They're not all fixable.


Does that mean that at this stage of the game you've run into an unfixable mistake?

Well, most of our projects -- save one -- have worked. And that one project is an instance where even looking back at the data presented, I still would have made the same decisions. Until we drilled and learned that that well had a much smaller acreage than what had previously been known about it, we couldn't have known.


Which means, in psychological jargon, you basically let it go and forgave yourself?

That's correct. As soon as we learned that the decision was not a good one, we cut away on the project. We plugged the well, and we moved on. And probably if I had completed that well, we would have had a little gas out of it and could have then said, gee, 100% of our projects have worked, which never hurts when you're talking to investors. I just can't do that.


Did that affect the way you listened to the next project?

No, because looking back on the data for that well, we would have made the same decision again the second time.


There are cases where it's very clear what's right and what's wrong, and there are cases where it's much more ambiguous. How do you deal with ambiguity? Do you treat it on a case-by-case basis?

While every instance is different, frequently two options are presented, and you have enough money for only one of them, and you have to try to figure out which is the better of the two. And in comparison you just need to ask the questions until you're persuaded that one or the other is going to emerge.


And then you just go with your gut?

Then you move with your hunch. My instincts have been very successful over a long span of time, and I'm willing to trust my instincts. And I've always forced myself to be as prepared as I possibly can be to make the decision.


How do you teach that skill to people?

I think that's tough. Preparation is something you can show them with outlines and with questions and recommendations on how to proceed. But that's something that I think folks have to learn at an early age -- to really know how to perform hard work to get the answers that they are looking for. I have really tried to surround myself with people who are like me, in terms of whether they're willing to work hard to reach objectives.


It sounds as if a lot of your communication with your people is oral. There's a school of thought among many CEOs that they just don't want to hear it. They don't want to be distracted by personal charm or persuasion. They prefer that everything be written and that they can then make their own decisions in a more sterile environment.

But you build in a huge time element when you require that your people always reduce things to writing.


And that's what you're trying to avoid?

If we couldn't reach rapid decisions, we would lose some opportunities. I do require certain items to be written down, such as the economic runs. Those are certainly in writing to be able to look at the different runs and strategies that were employed in comparing projects. But writing tomes is not what I want my people to be doing.

I want my people to be active and thinking and creative -- and working to develop projects for the company.


Often founders, when they begin to build their businesses, trust only their own instincts -- and that makes sense for a fledgling business. But many founders never learn the skill of trusting their employees. How did you learn to trust your staff?

I think that because of my own background, I've really learned what it is that I don't know. If you can recognize where you have strength and where you need to plug holes, you can surround yourself with people who can plug all those holes.

And then listening to those people is very important in making decisions. That's what drives me -- I try to be the listener that I always wanted to be.

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