Fixing the Roof

Strong winds earlier this week in Maryland led us into two related but very different decisions.

I came home Monday afternoon to discover shingles lying next to the front door and hanging in the trees in the front yard of our house.  That was unusual, and I was further surprised to learn that they came from our roof!  The wind had lifted dozens from the roof on the back half of our house and blown them over the front. 

After viewing the damage from the ground and reading that the weather forecast included more high winds and thunderstorms this week, we hurried to find and hire someone to repair the roof quickly. 
Due to the extreme time pressure, this chaotic context (Snowden and Boone, 2007) forced us to find something that works and reestablish order (an adequate roof).  We quickly searched online resources, asked friends for references, and even opened the yellow pages (we still had one from 2010) to get a list of roofers, and we called around until we had a few lined up to call back or inspect it the next morning (that took seven phone calls).  Some of those who called back said that they didn't do repairs, so they were out.  The first roofer who actually showed up, looked at the roof, and gave us a price got the job.  It was a pure satisficing strategy - we picked the first adequate alternative.   (It was quick: one roofer called later that morning and was surprised that we had already selected someone.)  We had a fixed roof later that day, and we could sleep better that night.

That was the first decision.  We now face a second decision: to select someone to do a roof replacement (the current roof is over 20 years old, and the shingle incident this week is a precursor to more significant problems in the future).  This decision has a complicated context in which we have to get more information about the state of the roof from experts, reconcile their opinions, investigate the firms, make tradeoffs, and finally pick one. 

One roof, two decisions. Both have the same problem (pick the best roofer), but the contexts, relevant attributes, and decision-making processes are very different.

Reference cited: Snowden, David J., and Mary E. Boone, “A Leader's Framework for Decision Making,” Harvard Business Review, Vol. 85, Issue 11, pages 69-76, November 2007.