“With good judgment, little else matters. Without it, nothing else matters.” Whether we’re talking about United States presidents, CEOs, Major League coaches, or wartime generals, leaders are remembered for their best and worst judgment calls. In the face of ambiguity, uncertainty, and conflicting demands, the quality of a leader’s judgment determines the fate of the entire organization. That’s why judgment is the essence of leadership. Yet despite its importance, judgment has always been a fairly murky concept. The leadership literature has been conspicuously quiet on what, exactly, defines it. Does judgment differ from common sense or gut instinct? Is it a product of luck? Of smarts? Or is there a process for making consistently good calls? Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis have each spent decades studying and teaching leadership and advising top CEOs such as Jack Welch and Howard Schultz. Now, in their first collaboration, they offer a powerful framework for making tough calls when the stakes are high and the right path is far from obvious. They show how to recognize the critical moment before a judgment call, when swift and decisive action is essential, and also how to execute a decision after the call. Tichy and Bennis bring their three-dimensional model to life with interviews with world-class leaders who have thrived or suffered because of their judgment calls. These stories include: • Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, whose judgment to grow through research and development transformed GE into the world’s premier technology growth company. • Joel Klein, chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, who made tough calls about teachers, students, and parents while turning around a troubled school system. • Jim McNerney, CEO of Boeing, whose strategic judgment helped him reinvigorate his company and restore a culture of trust and respect. • The late general Wayne Downing, who found an unexpected opportunity in the midst of crisis when he led the Special Operations raid to capture Manuel Noriega. • A. G. Lafley, CEO of Procter & Gamble, who bet $57 billion to purchase Gillette and reinvent his company. • Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy, who made the call to commit totally to a customer-centric strategy and led his people to execute it. Whether you’re running a small department or a global corporation, Judgment will give you a framework for evaluating any situation, making the call, and correcting if necessary during the execution phase. It will show you how to handle the overlapping domains of people, strategy, and crisis management. And it will help you teach your entire team to make the right call more often. No organization can afford to neglect this crucial discipline—and no previous book has ever brought it into such clear focus.

The 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards 2007

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Leadership: How To Call It Like It Is
Good leadership is essential, but it is difficult, sensitive and time-consuming, which is why so many aspiring managers find that it is not for them. Yet as the authors of this book point out, leadership is not only an innate ability, some aspects of it can be learned. The book is based on the authors' experience as consultants and research that included interviews with a number of top CEOs that included Jeffrey Immelt from General Electric, Jim McNerney from Boeing and A.G. Lafley from Proctor and Gamble, as well as a number of other executives from different parts of corporate America, as well as non-profits. The first point that they make is that good leaders make sound judgments about: People Strategy Dealing with crisis They then define some key qualities of leaders: 1. They are teachers: a term that the authors use is TPOV: Teachable Point of View. Noel Ticky ran General Electric's leadership center in Crotonville, New York, so not surprisingly Jack Welch is used as an example of a CEO who was also a master teacher who fostered a culture of continuous teaching by other executives in the company 2. They are inclusive: The book spends some time examining the way in which programs at Best Buy and Intuit have provided intense training of front-line workers in the basics of good business practices 3. They are effective storytellers: The authors describe a series of employee workshops conducted by Circuit City, in which teams were given an hour to write a story that they would like to see on the front page of Business Week two years from now. The stories had to be remarkably specific narratives, not only describing where the company would be in two years time, but also the company culture, leadership and challenges that they had faced. 4. They are self-aware: The effective leaders had for the most part overcome whatever impediments stood in their way, including themselves. Most had dissolved those blocks by a regular practice of ruthless self-scrutiny. 5. They are usually courageous: The authors picked Eleanor Josiatis, who runs the non-profit Focus: Hope in Chicago, whose mission is to combat racism and poverty. The organization grew out of the ashes of the Detroit riots of 1967, and over the years has carried on its work despite hate mail and threats. There is also a fascinating interview with Kathleen Gallo, who is the chief learning officer at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Hospital System, and whose work has become well known in the field. Leaders are taught to manage crisis by studying the methods employed by triage nurses, who are required to make life-or-death decisions every day. As Kathleen says, "You cannot plan for everything, so you plan for anything." A recent research study has suggested that leaders are often just the people who were not afraid to express an opinion, and they did so clearly and repeatedly. Eventually most other people would go along with them. That may well be correct, but in the long term it is essential to have mastery of a number of other skills, and this book provides us with some very clear guidelines for areas that that any of us can focus upon, examine and in which we can try to excel. Highly recommended. Richard G. Petty, MD, author of Healing, Meaning and Purpose: The Magical Power of the Emerging Laws of Life