The Sagan Standard is the first philosophical razor covered in a bit more detail. The background of this, and each razor, will be briefly covered and then applied practically to a construction scenario. The Sagan Standard says, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." While more than one person has come up with or stated this standard or something like it, Carl Sagan popularized it on his Cosmos TV series and in other media appearances. If you aren't familiar with who Carl Sagan is, he's a PhD level physicist. He spent more time on TV an in popular culture than most physicists. Sagan is like a (much) more intelligent and qualified version of Bill Nye, The Science Guy.
Anyway, during his lifetime he popularized the above term. I like it because it's simple and intuitive. A couple quick issues that might arise when attempting to apply it are that it encourages things to carry on as usual and extraordinary can be a subjective term. In construction, we are often stuck in our ways but I think people who want to innovate and improve things, especially dramatically, would help themselves and our industry by providing more realistic claims or more evidence of a claim being a reality. On both ends of the innovation and status quo structure, construction struggles. Technology and tool developers regularly make and try to sell something that is too early in development to have evidence of benefit, let alone extraordinary improvement in whatever category is supposedly improved. I might be the only person who has run into a bit of a brick wall with this but when I have asked about benefits of something new, sales reps have told me a few potential benefits and closed with adding that it was just cool. Vague details and subjective benefits aren't exactly extraordinary evidence to backup a grand problem solving claim. Maybe if claims were adjusted down to match the backend evidence, we'd see more incremental change and beneficial change in general.
At the other end of the spectrum is someone who says something has always been done one way and it's the best way and nothing will work in it's place. This thinking is obviously counterproductive. I think most of us have thought or gotten close to thinking like this if we've been around for a while. Just like being a little eager to change and seeing too much benefit in a small change, making an extraordinary claim about building the same way and avoiding change to maintain the status quo is bad without extraordinary evidence. This is because there is almost no process or deliverable out there that can improve at least a bit with some intelligent review and adjustments.
In general, I think most construction pros lean towards avoidance of extraordinary claims. It's good for our companies and careers if we under promise by a bit and then over deliver. That being said, I think our industry needs to figure out a way to create more room for experimentation and error.
Three points construction pros should look at in regards to claims and industry change are:
Think outside the box or at least outside our own heads so we don't get stuck in the status quo of thinking things have been done one way for so long there's no way or no point in changing things up.
Keep the reality of the jobsite and the mental makeup or our industry when developing and making a claim or pushing change.
Be as detailed and objective as possible when making a claim and providing evidence. Monthly forecast and P&L's rely and detailed and nearly objective data/results for use in making project decisions. When making extraordinary claims and providing extraordinary evidence we should be as specific and black and white in our claims and backup information.
Even when done right big claims and big evidence might work out less often than success occurs. Nine claims or ideas might not work out but the tenth one could be a game and profit changer for a company. If it's extraordinary enough, it might just change our entire industry and build a better world. If we keep plugging away and building, we might just build a better world than what existed when we started.
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