Making Good Decisions Half-Day Masterclass: Would you know a Good Decision if you saw one?

DESCRIPTION

Suitable for

All people who provide information for, or make, decisions under conditions of novelty, uncertainty or complexity – from relatively minor decisions (e.g. to collect data, do “studies”, hire a team member), through “project” level decisions (e.g. exploration, production enhancement) up to major decisions (eg field development, M&A, strategy, portfolio).  It is equally applicable to personal decisions!

Context

Business outcomes are largely determined by two factors: the decisions we make and uncertainties over which we have no control.  The best we can do to get good outcomes is to make good decisions – but would you know a good decision if you saw one? Like many other disciplines, good decision-making ability does not arise from “natural talent”, rather, from learning and developing a set of skills and “tools”, honed by experience.  However, most people have not been taught how to do this and they do not just “stumble across” it.

Content

Business outcomes are largely determined by two factors: the decisions we make and uncertainties over which we have no control.  The best we can do to get good outcomes is to make good decisions – but would you know a good decision if you saw one? Like many other disciplines, good decision-making ability does not arise from “natural talent”, rather, from learning and developing a set of skills and “tools”, honed by experience.  However, most people have not been taught how to do this and they do not just “stumble across” it.

The workshop will introduce key concepts in Decision Analysis (DA) and the Decision Dialogue Process (DDP) – a non-proprietary, rigorous (scientifically underpinned) approach to decision-making, used for over 50 years in a variety of sectors (oil & gas, pharmaceuticals, IT, military, aviation, sport, environmental management ….. ) for decisions whose outcomes are not fully predictable and which must be made within time & budget constraints.

It consists of a prescriptive, pragmatic methodology (process and tools) that is decision-agnostic and entirely scalable in that It balances the effort/cost of making a decision against its importance/consequences/ difficulty/cost.  Thus, it is applicable to a wide range of decisions – one paradigm fits all, but one size does not!

Attendees will be expected to respond to questions about decision-making and engage in small group discussions and exercises – and take way some immediately implementable ideas for improving their decisions and thus chances of getting desired outcomes.

Featured Speaker

Steve Begg is an oil and gas industry expert on decision-making under uncertainty, including asset and portfolio economic assessments and the psychology of decision-making, particularly bias assessment and mitigation.  He is co-author of the book, “Making Good Decisions”, commissioned by the Society of Petroleum Engineers.

He is an Emeritus Professor of Petroleum Engineering and Management at the Australian School of Petroleum at the University of Adelaide, where he has worked since 2002. Before joining the university, Steve was Director for Decision Science and Strategic Planning with Landmark Graphics Corporation (a Halliburton company) where he was responsible for leading improved economic evaluation and decision-making for both Landmark and its customers.  Earlier, he worked with BP for 13 years, the last 6 of which were spent in a variety of senior geo-science and engineering operational assignments in Alaska, which spanned production forecasting, economic evaluation, petroleum engineering, and reservoir characterization roles. He also spent seven years as a researcher and Project Manager with BP Research, where his focus was on risk and uncertainty assessment related to reservoir modelling.  His decision-making expertise is grounded in his understanding of the industry, surface and subsurface.

Steve is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and delivers in-house short-courses on decision-making and economic evaluation topics.  In 2003 he was a SPE Distinguished Lecturer on the topic “I would rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong: a new approach to investment decision-making” and was so again in 2011 on the topic “Reliability of Expert Judgements and Uncertainty Assessments”.

In 2000 he chaired an SPE Forum on the topic of “Adding Value by Leveraging Risk, Options and Portfolio Management” and later Chaired the SPE Forum Co-ordinating Committee.  He currently sits on the SPE M&I Discipline Committee and the SPE Distinguished Lecturer Committee. In 2014 he was elected to the Board of the Society of Decision Professionals.

Steve has published numerous papers on topics such as: decision-making under uncertainty; asset and portfolio investment evaluation/economics; psychological factors in judgement & decision-making (bias assessment and mitigation when eliciting subject-matter-expert opinions’ and uncertainty assessments); and reservoir characterization (heterogeneity/uncertainty modelling and up-scaling). He was instrumental in starting the SPE Economics and Management journal.  His contributions to decision-making and economic evaluation have been recognized by receiving the SPE Asia-Pacific regional award, and in 2016 the SPE’s top International Award for the Management and Information discipline.

Steve holds a PhD degree in Geophysics and a BSc degree in Geological Geophysics from Reading University and has attended executive education short courses at MIT and the University of Texas at Austin.

Event Run Sheet

• Registration open from 8:30 am
• Masterclass start from 9:00 am
• Masterclass finish at 1:00 pm

Cost:

SPE Members:                                $95.00

Non-members:                                 $120.00