From: Lawrence Krauss To: Cc: Lawrence Krauss Subject: Re: The Heathrow option Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2018 23:33:38 +0000 This is brilliant. Many thanks.. Lawrence p.s. needless to say, I agree with your assessment of Amelia and her situation. Lawrence M. Krauss Professor School of Earth & Space Exploration and Physics Department Arizona State University, Research Officer Assistant (Jessica): On Nov 14, 2018, at 3:01 PM, Dear Lawrence, wrote: I came across something on the Famam Street website today that is one explanation for why the ASU administration has behaved the way it has toward you. I'm sure you already have considered this. But the story is sticky, so I like it. Here's the story: Defensive Decision Making: What IS Best v. What LOOKS Best "It wasn't the best decision we could make," said one of my old bosses, "but it was the most defensible." What she meant was that she wanted to choose option A but ended up choosing option B because it was the defensible default. She realized that if she chose option A and something went wrong, it would be hard to explain because it was outside of normal. On the other hand, if she chose option A and everything went right, she'd get virtually no upside. A good outcome was merely expected, but a bad outcome would have significant consequences for her. The decision she landed on wasn't the one she would have made if she owned the entire company. Since she didn't, she wanted to protect her downside. In asymmetrical organizations, defensive decisions like this one protect the person making the decision. My friend and advertising legend Rory Sutherland calls defensive decisions the Heathrow Option. Americans might think of it as the IBM Option. There's a story behind this: A while ago, British Airways noticed a reluctance for personal assistants to book their bosses on flights from London City Airport to JFK. They almost always picked Heathrow, which was further away, and harder to get to. Rory believe