Chapter 1: Background

Project Purpose

Transportation leaders encounter multiple situations daily that require decisions to be made. These decisions can have impacts on billions of dollars or an entire state of travelers, and they often need to be made quickly and without all the information available. Even the decisions that seem minor in isolation can add up to a big impact on the nature of the organization, how dollars are spent, or the on-the-ground realities of the transportation system. Leadership-level decisions are the ones that cannot be made lower in departments of transportation (DOT) because they either cut across agency silos, trigger large-scale changes, incur public scrutiny, or carry high stakes.

This project seeks to help the leaders of transportation agencies improve their decision-making capabilities. While a plethora of advice exists in business management and similar spaces on how to make better decisions in general, none existed to specifically address the unique circumstances and challenges that exist in the public sector, transportation agency context. These challenges include public-sector organizational culture, the ramifications of large infrastructure project delivery, and the intersection of major decisions with politics.

The results of the research were to be a “practical and readily understood” guidebook for agency executives and the staff who advise them, along with case studies that would showcase the recommended decision-making strategies. A particular focus was placed on defining “good” decisions, characterizing common types of decisions encountered at a transportation agency, and identifying potential sources of bias that can derail good decisions.

Target Audience

Executive leaders at state DOTs are the primary audience for the guide. However, the background information, strategies, and case studies will also be informative to a range of senior leaders, managers, and future leaders at transportation agencies. The research aims to speak to the particular challenges of making decisions at the executive level, while retaining broad applicability outside of the top position at an agency. Given the executive focus, particular attention was given to visually organizing important information and key strategies for readers with limited time and resources. The guide was also organized to allow for specific reference as needed, rather than a cover-to-cover read, in order to be most useful to this busy target audience.

Desired Outcomes

In discussions with transportation leaders across the research, these individuals highlighted the frequency of the complex challenges they faced. Learning to overcome these challenges takes years of experience, which may be unavailable when a decision needs to be made. The NCHRP 20-24(141) project has the potential to significantly improve decision-making within transportation agencies, particularly for people who are new to leadership or new to an organization, by streamlining access to frameworks, processes, and strategies that experienced leaders found successful.

What is a “Good” Decision?

What makes a “good” decision can be a challenging first step when situations present technical, social, or political complexities that compound on one another, often with limited time and information. While decision theory utilizes expected utility, probability, and other economic and analytical methods to evaluate how individuals should behave, the background knowledge needed to apply these tools is often outside of leaders skillsets or beyond their time and resources that are available for a given decision. Therefore, developing a practical framework that is easy to grasp in a limited amount of time and that reflects other leaders’ experiences will start new leaders out on the right foot and provide more seasoned individuals with new tools for their arsenal.

What Should Leaders Consider?

As leaders implement their decision-making processes, what considerations should they make and what strategies can they implement to give those processes the best chance of success? Every situation will have unique context, so the research looks at how leaders overcome issues related to data and information as well as the sources of that information. Organizational and social dynamics can lead to an incomplete picture being presented as factual, stakeholder and community emotions can be tightly woven into a project’s design and impacts, and time may not be on a decision-maker’s side. Therefore, the project aims to provide actionable advice on how to address these challenges.

How Did Others Approach Decisions?

To ground recommendations in real-world practice, leaders will want to see how their peers and mentors applied them. These case studies were designed to dissect tough decisions and how various leaders’ philosophies and approaches were generally successful or made the best of a bad situation, specifically:

• What was the situation at hand?
• How was the decision made and by whom?
• What strategies were used?
• How was the final decision received?