By Warren Bennis
Warren Bennis says leaders are measured by the judgments they make—and he identifies three key areas where good judgment is essential.
There are four areas of knowledge that are critical to making good versus bad decisions: self-knowledge, social-network knowledge, organizational knowledge, and stakeholder knowledge.
Warren Bennis has studied leadership as much as any person on this planet. The 82-year-old distinguished professor of business administration and founding chairman of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California has led organizations and been writing, teaching and consulting about leadership for more than a half century. (He is also a former CIO Insight columnist.)
Still, the author of the forthcoming book, Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls (Portfolio, November 2007), written with University of Michigan management professor Noel Tichy, says that while scholars haven't ignored the topic of judgment, it hasn't been addressed often enough. Bennis says his latest book "is certainly not the last word on judgment. I can tell you that without any false modesty; I feel I'm just beginning to understand judgment myself."
Bennis notes that we make thousands of judgment calls throughout our lives, from the frivolous to the momentous. Making sound judgments can determine our success in life. But for leaders, he says, the impact of making right or wrong judgment calls is amplified, because their decisions have a direct bearing on the quality of life of so many individuals—as well as on the organizations they lead. CIOs have a special responsibility, he told CIO Insight executive editors Allan Alter and Eric Chabrow, not only because they must execute good judgment, but also because they provide other leaders with the information they need. An edited version of his remarks follows.
