Real-Life Decision Making
You are the foreperson of a moving crew that is charged with moving a large concrete structure that must be loaded on a barge so it can be moved over a body of water. Today is Friday, and your crew was on the road at 4 a.m., since the job site is a two-hour drive from their home community.
You would like to get the move finished by late afternoon so the crewmembers can return home and spend the evening with their families. If the move takes longer, you will have to ask the crew to work overtime. This means they won't get home until late, which will disappoint most of them.
It also means your employer will have to pay overtime, which he prefers not to do.
So far, the move has gone well. The crew has jacked up the structure, put wheels under it and moved it to a barge. After positioning the structure on the barge, they wait for you to decide whether or not you want to anchor the barge.
Your decision to anchor is based on weather conditions, the direction that the wind is blowing and the direction of the current.
Anchoring the barge will preserve the safety of the load, but it will also take up a lot of extra time. You consider the weather, wind and current and you decide that it is one of those cases where things could go either way.
If the weather, wind and current remain exactly as they are now, your load will probably be safe. If anything changes, even a little, your load will be in danger. You know the safe thing to do is to anchor the barge.
Your crew starts to bug you to skip the anchoring. "Oh come on," they say. "It will be safe. We have moved things by barge dozens of times and nothing has ever gone wrong. We want to get finished and get home for the weekend."
What do you do?