How to weigh up risk and make decisions like a firefighter
Nov 08, 2021
By Sabrina Cohen-Hatton, Senior firefighter, Researcher and Author
As a senior firefighter, Dr. Sabrina Cohen-Hatton is used to high-pressure situations. And her curiosity about how firefighters respond to risk led to her undertaking a decade of research into effective decision making.
The spark for Sabrina’s research was a brush with personal tragedy, after she was called to a fire that had potentially injured her husband. Thankfully he was unharmed, but it encouraged Sabrina to undertake a psychology degree and a PhD in behavioural neuroscience.
As organisations reflect and look for new opportunities as we move on from the pandemic, Sabrina’s work reveals valuable tools for ensuring we can respond confidently to risk. Alongside designing techniques for improving decision making, it emphasises the importance of listening to diverse viewpoints when weighing up risk and reward.
Sabrina Cohen-Hatton,
Senior firefighter, Researcher and Author
Situational awareness
Stressful, fast-paced environments impact the way people make decisions. They cause us to act on intuition and gut instinct rather than being analytical and reflective, meaning there is a greater chance of misunderstanding information or making a poor decision.
Therefore your ability to make effective decisions when under pressure partly relies on you having good situational awareness. This includes recognising the gaps in your knowledge and understanding, so you avoid making assumptions that lead to poor outcomes.
Sabrina uses a jigsaw puzzle as a metaphor for your understanding of any given situation. Some pieces of the jigsaw are based on facts or reliable data, others will be based on incomplete or unreliable data, and there will be missing pieces that represent gaps in your knowledge. Your brains fill these gaps with assumptions based on past experiences or existing knowledge.
“If you are making a decision involving risk – and particularly when responding to a crisis – it’s worth investing in your situational awareness,” says Sabrina. “Be aware of what data you have and how trustworthy it is, as it will impact the way you make decisions and it may not always be accurate.”
Greater situational awareness also helps you avoid ‘decision traps’, which include confirmation bias and tunnel vision.
For example, a person experiencing tunnel vision becomes preoccupied with one element of their situation and fails to see the bigger picture. “It’s easy for this to happen if you’re just focused on one piece of data and ignoring other facts or perspectives,” says Sabrina.
"Be aware of what data you have and how trustworthy it is, as it will impact the way you make decisions and it may not always be accurate."
Making decisions under pressure
To improve risk-based decision making, firefighters are trained to run through a series of ‘decision controls’ before they take action. This process can help leaders in any industry make decisions in a crisis, for example during a cyber attack or supply chain failure. The three steps are:
- Why are you taking a particular action? What is your goal?
- What do you expect to happen? What will come next?
- How does the benefit outweigh the risk?
According to Sabrina, taking a step back and quickly running through these questions helps avoid another decision trap – inertia.
"Decision inertia is when you're so focused on the risks and uncertainty it prevents you from making a decision. We call it 'paralysis by analysis'," says Sabrina. Focusing on specific goals and likely outcomes of a decision helps rationalise the situation and gives you more confidence in your actions.
A safe space for decision making
Senior leaders must recognise their own role in creating psychological safety. “We have a saying in the fire service – the first thing that gets to any incident is your reputation,” explains Sabrina. “You need to be aware of your impact on other people and ensure you aren’t causing other people to not speak up.”
Leaders must set the tone by being humble and sharing their failures as much as their successes. Demonstrating curiosity by asking questions also encourages others to admit they don’t know all the answers.
Sabrina’s research also shows the value of creating a culture that celebrates diversity and empowers people to share their perspectives regardless of their background or experiences. This opens up new opportunities for innovation, as leaders don’t fall into pre-existing patterns of behaviour and make the same decisions. “People need to feel confident in sharing their opinions and know their differences are valued,” says Sabrina.
Being transparent about our attitudes to risk, as well as our strengths and weaknesses, will be critical as organisations respond to emerging threats and look to uncover new opportunities.
“People need to feel confident in sharing their opinions and know their differences are valued”
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