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Why Everything Is Behind Schedule, Beyond Budget, and Below Projection

ACMP Texas hosted a virtual session with Dr. Sam L. Savage exploring why plans, budgets, timelines, and projections so often miss the mark, and how change leaders can better think about uncertainty, probability, and decision-making. Dr. Savage shared practical insight into the “flaw of averages” and how leaders can avoid common traps when interpreting forecasts, risks, and expected outcomes.

What we explored:

• Why average-based projections can create misleading expectations
• How uncertainty impacts schedules, budgets, and change outcomes
• Practical ways to communicate risk and probability more clearly
• How change leaders can make better decisions when the future is uncertain

Whether you work in change management, project leadership, strategy, operations, or organizational transformation, this session offered a fresh and practical way to think about uncertainty and decision-making.

About Dr. Sam L. Savage

Dr. Sam L. Savage is the Executive Director of ProbabilityManagement.org, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit devoted to standardizing the communication and calculation of uncertainty. He is the author of The Flaw of Averages: Why We Underestimate Risk in the Face of Uncertainty and Chancification: Fixing the Flaw of Averages. He is also the inventor of the Stochastic Information Packet, an auditable data array for conveying uncertainty, and serves as an Adjunct in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University.