The author is professor of management practice at London Business School.
Judgment is critical to management in general and leadership in particular. As the late US leadership academic Warren Bennis argued, “Judgment is the core of exemplary leadership. With good judgment, little else matters. Without it, nothing else matters.”
The stakes are high. Consider Boeing’s technical mis-steps after years of excessive focus on financial metrics, or the litany of financial scandals at Credit Suisse arising from overconfidence and hubris.
But good judgment is not just about avoiding disaster. At the top, directors in the UK and elsewhere are legally required to show independent judgment. Less visible, but just as crucial, is judgment’s role in the quality of day-to-day management. And as AI upends management thinking and replaces many routine tasks, judgment will become more prominent as one of the ways in which humans add value.
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