By: Robert H. Miles 

Two of my colleagues, Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis, have just released a new book called “Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls” (New York: Portfolio, 2007). I’ve reviewed the book and wanted to share some perspectives on the book.

Hurrah for Noel and Warren. At the very prime of their careers, these distinguished scholars have pooled their knowledge and research to wade in to the deep end of the pool on the murky but critical subject of management judgment. This has been a domain in which many others have feared to swim because of the inherent ambiguity and almost certain exposure to criticism associated with such an interdisciplinary construct.

Both authors have worked in tight with some of the most powerful transformational leaders on the planet. The sheer access these scholars were able to create to high-profile leaders embroiled in some of the major business crises of recent times is quite impressive. Less established scholars would have had to sit on the sidelines as distant observers or head for the basement to run yet another round of experiments on college sophomores. Yet, despite their clear association with these industry titans, Tichy and Bennis make a strong fact-based case against the “superman” idea, focusing instead on the critical information and influence that resides in the members of the team and among the stakeholders surrounding a great leader during times requiring major judgment calls.

Here are some their more important insights into the phenomenon of judgment:

- Judgment is not a discrete event or point decision. It is a process that embedded in and influenced by a set of relationships and a network of stakeholders.

- Judgment should not be evaluated on the basis of taste or idealized style, but on the outcomes it produces. This squares well with a recent empirical study of leadership effectiveness at the University of Chicago, which has made a compelling case that successful leaders are not always the “nice” guys that many social scientists hope to find when they tour the leadership hall of fame.

- Judgment is so important that it can’t wait to be framed and developed until it is needed; leaders must make the time to create a point of view and align and engage their team and stakeholders around it before the moment arrives when a judgment call is needed.

- The framework developed to make good judgments in high profile situations is just as relevant for general managers anywhere in an organization facing any major judgment call.

- Of all the classes of judgment calls, the ones involving people are the most critical, from those involving the selection of an organization’s new executive leader to those involving who should be on the leader’s team.

Perhaps the most important message of the book is that leaders must focus on creating a point of view and align their team and stakeholders around it well in advance of the immediate need for tough personnel, strategic and crisis calls. This book and the grounded insights it provides elevate leadership judgment to the level of other traditionally important general management disciplines.

The bottom line on Judgment, and that is precisely where the authors fix their interpretation of a successful call, is that if more executive leaders and general managers used the framework developed in this book the quality of their judgment calls would certainly improve significantly. Indeed, Tichy and Bennis not only have been able to crack the code of judgment at the most strategic level and involving some of the more critical judgments calls in recent business history, but also to translate these insights into a practical framework that is accessible and useable by general managers at all organizational levels and facing a very wide variety of challenges.

As an active thought and practice leader in the field of corporate transformation, I will never look at or treat the subject of management judgment quite the same as a result of reading this courageous and impressive book.

Photo from Library Leadership Network 

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