Alan Weiss’s Monday Morning Memo® – 10/14/2024
Where has judgment gone?
We once had managers and coaches in sports who determined what play to call, which players should play in what positions, how best to use the time remaining, and so on. These decisions, of course, are still made.
But they’re made with computers and numbers. They’re made with what we call “analytics.” (I once had a female client tell me she didn’t want me to pay for our meal because the “optics” were disturbing. You see what I mean here? The terms have become memes.)
I’ve found in my coaching that people don’t trust their own judgment. Over 80% of my Fortune 500 executive coaching assignments were to validate what leaders had already decided, for which they wanted objective, independent blessing. In my entrepreneurial coaching I find every week that people have missed opportunities because they doubted their own judgment about how to proceed (this is too aggressive, I’d be seen as rude, I’d look desperate).
Baseball has come to rely on mobile devices filled with data that dictate a coach’s decision about when to change pitchers, or use a pinch hitter, or try to steal a base. Sandy Koufax, one of my idols and probably the greatest pitcher in history, commonly pitched over 20 complete games a season, with his record being 27 in two consecutive seasons. Some starting pitchers today don’t pitch 27 complete games in their entire careers. Even with a no-hitter going, the manager will remove the pitcher after the computer says he’s pitched his limit for the game. (Imagine a golfer who has someone else hit the irons or putt.)
In football, coaches decide whether to take a risk (use fourth down to continue a drive, for example), based on the “analytics.” They’re paid to use their judgment, experience, awareness of the game environment, and so forth. But if it’s simply what the screen tells you, we just need some nerdy kid on a heated bench with a stick of gum working the cell phone.
When I’ve made split-second decisions—which I’ve had to make without taking out PowerPoint, mapping software, or Etch-a-Sketch®—I’ve either been right or could quickly ajdust and be right almost all the time. I trust my judgment.
We won’t be overcome by artificial intelligence. But we might be overcome by obfuscation of our judgment and the false gods of data. You know, I think we all worship something. The Commandment admonishes, “worship no other gods before me.” I would beseech you, don’t let your worship be “data.”
It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment. —Marcus Tullius Cicero
Cancel culture is about rushing to judgment. I’d love us all to slow down and say, “Stop, let’s think about this. Does this person really deserve never to have a career?” —Richard Bacon
You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment. —Alvin Toffler
I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination. —David Ogilvy
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