In the Classroom
Taking a Fresh Look at Decision Making

As director of event services for the Philadelphia Eagles football team, Leonard Bonacci is responsible for working with partners who provide security, concessions, parking, and other services for game days and special events. The challenge that Bonacci brought to Wharton's Critical Thinking program, which is not uncommon in outsourced relationships, was how to get external partners to really buy in to the service culture of the organization and its goal to provide the best entertainment experience in the NFL.

The program changed the way Bonacci looked at the problem. During one of the evening sessions where teams of participants worked in breakout rooms on specific problems brought in from their organizations, Professor John Hershey, academic co-director of the program, challenged Bonacci. "I remember Dr. Hershey came in one night and was really tilling up the soil," Bonacci said. "He said: 'Are you really looking at this right?' and we kept expanding the circle."

This encouraged Bonacci to step back and take a fresh look at the challenge. "The class focused on reframing the issue and addressing the right problem, not just symptoms," Bonacci said. "Through the class I was able to look at the situation and say Am I really standing in the shoes of my partner? The "a-ha" moment for me was when I asked 'Am I really correct in my assessment of what is going on?' I went into the class being frustrated when someone doesn't agree with me. I left the class saying 'Good, please tell me about it.'"

When he returned to the office, he applied the new approach. "One of the first things I did when I got back was to say to our partners 'What is it that you need?' It gave them the permission to ask the right questions. Once they understood that I understood what they were trying to do, it opened up an exchange of ideas."

A Humbling Experience

The Wharton program was a humbling experience in many ways, as professors used exercises and cases to demonstrate traps in thinking and to sharpen critical thinking. Bonacci, for example, was the "winner" of an auction for a $20 bill in which he actually ended up bidding more than $20. The auction was structured so that a second bidder also pays, making it easy for competitors to overbid. "I bit that hook so hard," he said.

Another important lesson was to separate the decision process from outcomes. "Decisions should not be judged based on outcomes," he said. Good decisions may have bad outcomes. Bad decisions may have good outcomes. "We often judge based on the outcome. Now, I spend more time in planning the decision rather than worrying about the outcome, which you can't control. Sometimes it is just bad luck. If a football lands on its point, it could go either left or right."

In addition to stepping into the shoes of his partners, the program also considered ways to take a fresh look at their customer base. "He decided to frame his customer as all potential fans, not just the fans who happen to be at the park," said Hershey. "That is, think about the very large number of Eagles fans who don't go to games, and think about how the incentives for and behavior of the operational staff could make the park a more attractive place to go."

Continuing the Dialogue

Bonacci said that access to professors during evening study sessions helped to apply the insights from the classroom to specific organizational challenges. "I went to another executive program at another school at the same level, and while it was a great experience, it didn't have the same level of interaction. During the evening study sessions at Wharton, the instructors really made themselves available. This was invaluable."

The dialogue that Bonacci found so useful is now being extended outside the classroom through Wharton's Learning Continuum. "We are building continuing contact with our participants and measuring the impact of our program," Hershey said. "This begins in the classroom where participants identify plans for implementing lessons from the program and measurable outcomes." Then, Wharton follows up with participants to ask about their progress toward these goals.

Bonacci has already seen an impact in his relationships with service partners. "We are not as reserved. We are able to put more things on paper and agree on milestones. We are putting together training programs for all the supervisors in the building, regardless of discipline so all supervisors will be on the same page. This was an idea we had discussed before, but now we really put it into play."

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