Those of you in leadership positions know that the decisions you make on a daily basis are critical to the success of your organization. These decisions guide the direction of the company, and they have the power to greatly improve its success… or to drive it into the ground. Many executives take the “gut” approach to decision-making – they listen to their instincts and make solo decisions based on intuition. This approach works for some people; however, it’s a gamble.
According to Thomas H. Davenport and Brook Manville in their book, Judgment Calls: 12 Stories of Big Decisions and the Teams That Got Them Right, organizational judgment leads to better decision-making outcomes. Executives who call on the collective experience of their team are far more likely to make wise decisions. Most organizations also have a wealth of data that can be analyzed and used to inform future decisions. An executive who leverages these valuable assets is more likely to make a good judgment call than one who relies on intuition alone. I recommend this book to anyone in a leadership position.
Here’s a summary from Amazon Books:
“Despite the dizzying amount of data at our disposal today—and an increasing reliance on analytics to make the majority of our decisions—many of our most critical choices still come down to human judgment. This fact is fundamental to organizations whose leaders must often make crucial decisions: to do this they need the best available insights.
“In Judgment Calls, authors Tom Davenport and Brook Manville share twelve stories of organizations that have successfully tapped their data assets, diverse perspectives, and deep knowledge to build an organizational decision-making capability—a competence they say can make the difference between success and failure. This book introduces a model that taps the collective judgment of an organization so that the right decisions are made, and the entire organization profits.
“Through the stories in Judgment Calls, the authors—both of them seasoned management thinkers and advisers—make the case for the wisdom of organizations and suggest ways to use it to best advantage. Each chapter tells a unique story of one dilemma and its ultimate resolution, bringing into high relief one key to the power of collective judgment. Individually, these stories inspire and instruct; together, they form a model for building an organizational capacity for broadly based, knowledge-intensive decision making.”
