WHEN YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE IMPACT YOUR JUDGMENT IS HAVING ON YOUR DECISIONS

Dear Founder,

As a CEO, you have to make judgments all day long. I would argue that the same is true in our personal lives. We also are constantly making snap judgments: that person is a bad driver, a lousy planner, a crummy cook. (There’s plenty of interesting material on this topic—check out Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.)

While making fast judgments can be detrimental in your personal life, they are especially consequential in your job, where you can dramatically impact someone’s career and livelihood. Think about it: You make a hiring decision based on judgment, and you use the same judgment to decide on a career promotion or a raise. It comes into play with everything: which strategy should we chase, which product should we build, which person do we promote?

Understanding the role that our judgment plays is a really complicated issue. Sometimes we think we are making decisions with the appropriate facts, but we all have powerful, always-running unconscious cognitive biases that affect our decisions. And our brains can behave completely differently in different contexts. Our biases may lead us to hire someone that acts like us or seems familiar and they may cause us to stay away from something we don’t know or don’t understand.

None of this means that we should shy away from making decisions. We simply must understand that our judgments will always be fast and imperfect and therefore we must do everything in our power to build some process and transparency for our decision-making. Here’s what to keep in mind so you can keep a clear and fair mind before you make a decision:

• Don’t ever fret about whether you have to make decisions. Fret about whether you are doing them without quick judgments and with an open mind—that will dictate the best thing to do.

• Conduct decisions with an air of wonder. Ask yourself: Do I have all the facts I’d like to have? Am I missing anything? (You always are.) Are there subconscious biases creeping in? Ask: Have I thought of everything else? and go back and reconsider.

• Ask others for their opinions on what they would do if they were you. Make sure you are not insular on who to ask—don’t gloss over people you are pretty sure will disagree with you. Think about how anyone else in your circumstances would respond and what they would decide. Don’t be afraid of asking for help if you don’t know the answer. Go to your board, employees, or peers. Gathering input from others is often helpful and doesn’t mean you will not ultimately make the decision. And the real mastery comes when everyone else thinks they made the decision, but in reality you did.

• Determine if this decision is one that you have to make. If someone else can do it, that’s good; it’s an opportunity for them to hone their judgment. You should always be working to empower your people to make crucial decisions. (See the letter “When you need to know who owns what.”)

• Decide. Understand the time constraints of the decision and proactively decide whether to make a decision or not. Does the situation require an answer now? If so, make it. Too many people delay making decisions. That is, in essence, making a decision.

• Hone your judgment so that you keep getting better. If you make a decision that isn’t right, learn from it. Be willing to admit when you’ve made a mistake. Acknowledge your error and fix it fast. Consider adding a postmortem process for key decisions: Were they good or bad? What information should you have gotten? Judgment tends to gets easier with experience and practice, though keeping an open, inquisitive mind often becomes harder.

We all must realize that we are all applying judgment, every day. Do your best to have pure and transparent motives, which will help you make fair and better judgments and clear and sound decisions.

All the best,

Maynard