I have been scratching the surface of behavioural economics for a while now. It’s a fascinating subject, and at first seems counter intuitive, but as I adapt my thinking to become more statistical… I’m starting to wonder about the criteria of success in construction.
An example is from Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. They were a great duo, their research is a key link between psychology and economics. Kahneman writes a brilliant summary of his work in a book called Thinking, fast and slow.
Kahneman gives a range of examples, supporting the inability for our minds to consider statistics effectively in our faster modes of thinking.
A slight tangent, Kahneman talks about his relationship with Tversky and tells a story about his effectiveness in Tversky’s presence. He describes how his thinking was more complete when he was working with Tversky and that their whole was grater than the sum of their individual efforts.
I too feel the same about my close colleagues and friends in the industry. We should take note of this and help others realise that we are far better off working as a unit over personal gain and points of view!
Back on subject… My question to you is:
Is success in construction beyond randomness?
Many clients will only have enough time in their life time to design and build a hospital from start to finish, and the same goes for some of those who will deliver it.
A step deeper, the selection of supply chain members. Consider the winners curse and the distribution of tenders for a project. Could we consider the aggregate result to be arbitrary?
If so, how can project managers and directors, CEOs and MDs attribute success to their frameworks / firms?
I don’t know the answer, nor do I have a preference! For me there seems to be a possibility for success to be randomly distributed and I hope someone, somewhere is looking in to it!
BIMonomics 
Neil,
Are you arguing against yourself?
Love the Kahneham and Tversky story – the principle of collaborative working right there.
Yet your randomness point is surely the antithesis of collaborative working!
Rob
I argue with myself regularly. I’m one head injury away from making it a public display in my local high street.
I understand your point, for me I’m still undecided if people are self interested at the core and it’s group activities that mediate behaviours. Be it facilitated by physical interaction or across open social networks.
Or altruistic behaviour is not a result of well aligned self interested behaviour and is a pure form of human interaction.
How that links to the randomness of success is a bit of a leap…
The point I’m trying to make is that people with the best intentions are still susceptible to flaws in cognition priming, heuristics etc.
Therefore, could we leave success at the door? What if we dropped the typical measures of success and rely on something else…
This is where I hit a wall. My thinking is in the WIP folder and is not ready to be viewed on the CDE in the shared folder!
Little 1192 joke there for you!
I agree that the whole being far greater than the sum of its parts, and I’m seeking likeminded folk to debate it with!!