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February 2008
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Judgment: Learning How to Make Great Calls
s the ability to make consistently good judgment calls the fundamental essence of leadership?
Realistically, leaders are remembered for their best and worst judgment calls, especially when the stakes are high, information is limited and the correct call is far from obvious. In the face of ambiguity, uncertainty and conflicting demands, the quality of a leader's judgment determines the entire organization's fate.
That's why leadership experts Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis claim judgment is the essence of leadership. In their popular book, Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls (Portfolio, 2007), they write: "With good judgment, little else matters. Without it, nothing else matters."
But there's no one-size-fits-all way to make a judgment call, the authors emphasize. Every organization has distinct problems, people and solutions.
A Framework for Leadership Judgment
Above all, a judgment call should not be viewed as a single-point-in-time event. At some juncture, leaders do make the call, but this is only one moment in the middle of the judgment process.
The process begins when leaders recognize the need for a decision. They consequently frame and name the issue, align people and continue through successful execution. Leaders are said to have "good judgment" when they repeatedly make calls that turn out well, largely because they've mastered a complex, constantly morphing process that unfolds in several dimensions.
There are three phases to the process:
- Time: This includes what happens before the leader makes the decision, framing and naming the issue, what the leader does during the moment of the call, and what he/she must oversee to ensure the call produces the right results.
- Domains: The three critical domains are judgments about people, strategy and leadership during crises.
- Constituencies: Leaders make judgment calls in relation to those around them. Relationships are crucial sources of information, and they must be managed during all phases of the process to achieve a successful outcome.
Three Judgment Domains
People: Leaders cannot set sound direction and strategy for their enterprises or deal with crises without smart judgment calls about the people on their teams. This is definitely the most complex domain. Sound judgments about people require leaders to:
- Anticipate the need for key personnel changes
- Specify leadership requirements with an eye toward the future—not the rearview mirror
- Mobilize and align the social network to support the right call
- Make the process transparent so it can be deemed fair
- Make it happen
- Provide continuous support to achieve success
Strategy: When the current strategic road fails to lead to success, the leader must find a new path. The quality and viability of a strategic judgment call is a function of:
- The leader's ability to look over the horizon and frame the right question
- The people with whom he/she chooses to interact
Crisis: During a crisis, leaders must have clear values and know their ultimate goals. Crises handled poorly can lead to an institution's demise.
The Process of Making Judgment Calls
In all three domains, good judgment calls always involve a process that starts with recognizing the need for the call, with steps that facilitate effective execution.
- The Preparation Phase: This phase includes sensing and identifying the need for a judgment call, framing and naming the judgment call, and mobilizing and aligning the right people. While these steps may seem obvious, many factors can contribute to faulty framing and naming, which can result in a bad judgment call. It's important to allow "redo moments" and continually adjust to get it right.
- The Call Phase (Making the Judgment Call): There's a moment when leaders make the call, based on their views of the time horizon and the sufficiency of people's input and involvement.
- The Execution/Action Phase: Once a clear call is made, execution is a critical part of the process. Resources, people, capital, information and technology must be mobilized to make it happen. During this phase, feedback loops allow for adjustments.
Resources and Constituencies
Four types of knowledge are necessary for making judgment calls:
- Self-Knowledge: Leaders who exercise good judgment calls are able to listen, reframe their thinking and give up old paradigms.
- Social-Network Knowledge: Leadership is a team sport. There must be alignment of the leader's team, the organization and critical stakeholders to create the ongoing capacity for good judgment calls.
- Organization Knowledge: Good leaders work hard to continuously enhance the team, organization and stakeholder capacity at all levels to make judgment calls.
- Stakeholder Knowledge: Good leaders engage customers, suppliers, the community and boards in generating knowledge to support better judgments.
Leaders' Storylines: Teachable Points of View
Winning leaders—the ones who continually make the best judgment calls—have clear mental frameworks to guide their thinking. They tell visionary stories about how the world works and how they envision results. They energize and enroll people through stories.
Winning leaders are teachers, and they teach by telling stories. They develop a teachable point of view: valuable knowledge and experiences that convey ideas and values to energize others.
This teachable point of view is most valuable when it's weaved into a storyline for the organization's future success. As a living story, it helps the leader make the judgment call and makes the story become reality because it enlists and energizes others.
Winning story lines address three areas:
- Where are we now?
- Where are we going? (The inspirational storyline boosts the motivation for change and defines the goal.)
- How are we going to get there?
The storyline is never complete, and it's always being modified by the leader's judgments. But without it, the leader's judgments are disconnected acts that may not mean anything on an emotional level. That's why storylines are necessary to motivate and energize the organization so everyone can move forward and make things happen.
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The greatest amount of wasted time is the time not getting started.
- Dawson Trotman
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Made to Stick, Why Some Ideas Survive And Others Die
Written by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Published by Random House, 2007
Urban legends, conspiracy theories and bogus public health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas—businesspeople, teachers, politicians, journalists and authors—struggle to make their ideas stick.
This book by brothers Chip and Dan Heath is well written, well researched, and has a good balance between story telling and how-tos. The ideas allow you to transform the way you communicate ideas. It shows us the vital principles of winning ideas, and tells us how we can apply the principles to make our ideas stickier.
 
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
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Chip Scholz is Head Coach of Scholz and Associates, a firm dedicated to putting the WOW back in your work and life.
Business owners rely on Chip to be their coach and personal consultant, taking their life and their work to the client defined next level.
Contact Chip for a free get acquainted call:
Chip Scholz
Scholz and Associates, Inc.
Phone: 704-987-0195
Cell: 704-400-6926
chip@scholzandassociates.com
www.scholzandassociates.com.
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