Judgment – How Leaders Make Decisions

Your performance as a project manager is directly tied to your ability to make good decisions consistently.

This past week I was scrounging around my someday-maybe books to read pile when I came across Noel Tichy’s and Warren Bennis’s Judgment: How winning leaders make great calls.   A few wonderful hours browsing this 370-odd page tome yielded the following basic concepts.  They may be helpful to you as you think about your own decision making.

Leadership Judgment Process

Great decisions are more ongoing process than single action.  Tichy and Bennis divide decision making into a three stage process: (a) Preparation, (b) Call, and (c) Execution.   In using this process, the leaders they analyzed freely repeat or “redo” steps as needed.  What’s most important is not getting everything right immediately, but rather moving continually and inexorably in the right direction.

Judgment Areas

People, strategy and crisis are three of the main areas in which leaders need to consistently exercise judgment.  The book covers each of these areas extensively.

People

People decisions include building or rebuilding a team, and creating high level support.

Strategy

Strategy decisions continually change.
Strategy decisions require intellectual reasoning and intuition.
Strategy decisions are made by leaders themselves.

Crisis

Leaders take responsibility for handling crises.
In a crisis, it’s essential to remember the ultimate goal.
Poor judgment in people and/or strategy can lead to crisis.

During a PMO project I was fortunate to work in close proximity to a senior executive who was an excellent leader.  He spent a great deal of time formulating, planning, discussing and executing strategies.  I was impressed by how quickly he was able to modify or abandon a strategy when it became necessary.  He showed me the crucial importance of thinking before it’s time to act.

Handbook for Leadership Judgment

The book includes an 80 page handbook with exercises and guidelines.  Even if you don’t have time to read the whole book, this supplement would be useful if you seek to identify areas in which you’d like to improve your own decision making.

Recommendations Sought

If you have any articles or books which you have found helpful in the area of decision making, please let me know.  I have a keen personal interest!

Originally posted 2009-01-19 08:00:30.

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