Judgment - How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls by Tichy and Bennis - Book Report/Review Example

Judgment Analysis Paper THESIS MENT In this study, the main objective is to analyse the actual context of a book and highlight the key lessons accordingly. In order to attain the objective, the book “Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls” has been selected which is written by Noel M. Tichy, Warren G. Bennis during the year of 2007. BOOK REVIEW An overview of the actual context of the book. In order to critically analysis the concept of the book, it has been observed that the authors Tichy and Bennis (2007), has emphasised judgment of the leaders with the aim of achieving success significantly. In accordance with Tichy and Bennis (2007), the characteristics of the best leaders depend upon the good decision making capabilities of the leaders (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). Apart from this, the authors focuses on how a leader react and how a leader making judgment calls in order to attain success that is very important during the phase of uncertainty or under tremendous amount of pressure. As per the authors view point, the roles of the leaders are always difficult and challenging. The authors further stresses that leaders who make good judgments can be considered as a good leader, whereas leaders who exercise poor judgments can be considered as a poor leader (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). Key lessons.From the overview of the actual book it has been observed that making the right decisions or calls largely depends upon few determinants in order to attain success particularly during the challenging circumstances. The principles of good judgments are mainly based on three factors. Those factors are mentioned below: I. Judgment about people. II. Judgment about Strategy. III. Judgment about crisis. According to the authors point of view good leadership judgment is maintained by a leader through strong decision making. Further in order to do so a leader should research thoroughly a particular domain that is related with the prevailing scenario and should gather plenty of experience in that particular field. During the evaluation it has been observed that number of good judgments made by a leader is less prominent. However, it is extremely important that out of those judgments how many judgment calls become more successful. According to the study, it can be evidently asserted that good leaders not only make better calls but they also choose the important decisions in order to enhance the performance of an entity. On the contrary, if leaders do not make smart judgment calls while making strategy then it will be very difficult to meet desire goal (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). For an example, during the year of 2000, A. G. Lafley, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Proctor & Gamble has hired few executives. Even after the two years of their hiring, he had not seen any progress of his firm during that phase. Immediately after that he had realized that many of these executives did not have the right mind set to take tough calls for the company. Thus, he altered the executives according to knowledge and experience for the required field. As a result, within a short span P&G’s earnings and stock price climbed more than 58% (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). JUDGMENT CALLS In order to analyse the judgment calls it has been observed that in order to make effective decisions leaders have to involve with the three domains such as people, strategy and crisis. People judgment calls. People are the most critical factor about which leaders make judgment calls. According to the observation it can be evidently asserted that people have utmost impact on nearly everything. Thus, people can turn around a decision towards good or bad. It has been also observed that a good team member can make a decision which can go wrong way. Similarly, a bad team member can took a mess up decision which can be executed brilliantly. If people does not make smart judgment calls then there is no chance of making a sound direction or effective strategy for an enterprise in a crisis domains. People judgment calls are the most complex of all the judgment calls. For example, during the year 2005 Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) management has fired Carly Fiorina due to massive failure in business progression and due to declining stock price of around 15%. Due to dismal performance of the organization, she was succeeded by Mark Hurd. On his appointment, he altered her team and laid-off 15,000 employees. He along with his colleagues was able to turn out the failure of Fiorina into a huge success (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). It is worth mentioning that a judgment call can be considered as poor or good depending up on the effectiveness of the judgment calls made. In order to make effective judgments, a leader must recognize the need of the situation first of all. Apart from this, a leader must also need to frame the issue significantly. Moreover, a leader also needs to mobilize and align the entire events from where the required information and advices can be gathered in order to make a good judgment call (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). Strategy judgment calls. The actual role of a leader is to lead his team or organization towards accomplishing pre-determined goals and attaining success. In order to attain success, strategy is considered as an essential way or path chosen by the leaders. Even when the current strategy does not lead team towards success, at that point of time it is leaders’ responsibility to find new path or way for success. At the same time, it has been also observed that poor strategic judgments can often lead a team towards crisis situation. It has been also observed that good leaders make a habit of sensing, framing and aligning situations so that they are able to formulate new judgment call, which can arise at any moment in a crisis domain. For an example, during the year 2004 when Jeff Immelt succeeded Jack Welch who then decided to transform his company into a technological company. Thus, he has selected few technologies and along with that invested around $10 billion in order to attain success. Immelt asserted that selecting appropriate strategy is more important than moving into a new business (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). Thus, from the analyse it can be evidently asserted that in order to make effective strategic judgment for a team a leader should evaluate both cognitive process and emotional process. After evaluating those processes, a good leader must have to identify the need of the judgment and according to that a good leader should implement the strategy in order to achieve the team expectation effectively. On the contrary, even after evaluating and identifying the need, if the strategy does not work properly, then it is also responsibility of the good leaders’ to sense and identify an alternative strategy judgment in order to achieve team’s common goal smoothly(Tichy and Bennis 1-392). Crisis judgment calls. On the other hand, bad calls of a leader can shift the performance of a team towards downward and also can put the entire team on a crisis phase. According to the observation, it has been ascertained that due to poor judgment calls the crisis phase often evolve very quickly. Thus, it can be asserted that crisis calls are most useful for leaders through which leaders can take precautions according to the situation. Moreover, it also helps a leader to compress and highlight several important elements of making judgment calls. For an example, David Novak the CEO of YUM! Brand has successfully navigated the crisis phase in the year of 2005. During that period Bird flu has created fear among customers, as a result most of the people reluctant to buy chicken and eat chicken. Correspondingly, they decided to educate the people regarding the chicken served at KFC and subsequently this resulted in record sale of KFC chicken in China (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). It has been further observed that several organizations have faced crisis during the business activities at least for once in its life cycle. If the leaders are not able to handle or address that crisis efficiently, then it will be very difficult for that organisation to reinforce its situation and attain organisational goal. Thus, it can be evidently asserted that if leaders are not able to handle crisis significantly, then good judgment calls also cannot be made by the leaders and that can destroy the reputation of the organisation. Thus, it can be apparently asserted that leaders must be communicate with team members along with senior members effectively in order to gather and analyzing data for executing good judgment calls under any circumstances and also to make crisis calls during tremendous pressure situation (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). STORY LINE It is very natural that a judgment call can lead a business organisation towards any of the several outcomes such as good, bad and stable among others. Thus, leaders need to make their choices depending upon few contexts. First of all leaders need to analyse and evaluate the traditional approach of the organisation in order to identify the trend of the organisation. Apart from that, leaders should understand the organisational values and ethics. Finally, leader should generate a strategy in order to accomplish the organizational goal smoothly (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). The authors’ Noel M. Tichy, Warren G. Bennis has created a leadership judgment process for aspiring leaders, which can reduce major challenges and also helps leaders to make actual good judgments. The process has been shown below: Figure: 1 Effective Process of Making Judgment calls (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). The author has identified three different phase in order to accomplish success effectively in case of judgment calls. As per author’s belief, good judgment can be practiced through following this process. The procedure of making decisions through this process is asserted below: Sense and identify. During the preparation phase, leaders must have the courage to realize the importance of decision making. This is due to the reason that whenever a crisis arises a leader must choose an alternative decision frequently. Thus, leaders’ should have the capability of sensing and identify effective judgments quickly (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). Frame and name. In order to made effective judgments quickly, leaders must outline the frame and made realistic, which encourages team members to rely on the judgment calls significantly. Thus, it can be asserted that during preparation phase frame and name helps both the organisations and leaders (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). Mobilize and align. Similarly, it is leaders’ responsibility to mobilize and align the entire event information and advices during the preparation phase which can help the organisation as well as leaders to gather the required information in order to make good judgment calls (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). The call. After receiving all the available information and assembling them as a leader it is quite essential take the call during this phase. Thus, judgment calls made by leaders determines the course of action (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). Make it happen. Even after call phase, execution is quite necessary for any organisation and it is leaders’ responsibility to execute the judgment call in order to achieve success effectively. Furthermore, in order to do so leaders must allocate resources, people, money, technology, and information towards the business during the execution phase (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). Learn and adjust. During the execution phase a leaders must constantly reconsider and alter the plan if it is needed in order to ensure the expected efficiency level. Moreover, it can be asserted that through evaluating the recent performance and actual goal of the organisation, leaders can select specific predetermined judgment calls, which can helps to achieve the outcomes significantly (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). According author Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis, in order to make good judgment and achieve organisational goal a leader should practice this process. Notably, through practicing this process a leader also can make tough decisions during crisis period. KNOWLEDGE ASSESSMENT The authors have identified that the accuracy of judgment calls can increase or develop the knowledge of leaders. Apart from this, good judgment calls also help leaders to increase social network. For an example, it can be asserted that if a leader took decisions for his/ her organisation after evaluating several ways, then certainly it will help a leader to gather deeper knowledge about that organisation. Moreover, it will also help the leader to increase stakeholders for that organisation. From the analysis it has been observed that the quality of leaders’ judgment also depends on the ability of leaders’ to use his/ her knowledge in order to make good judgment calls (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). According to the Tichy and Bennis (2007), knowledge can be segmented in four ways such as self-knowledge, social network knowledge, organisational knowledge and contextual knowledge (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). These four types of knowledge are illustrated in detail below: Self-knowledge. In order to lead a team a leader must have self-knowledge. Self-knowledge describes the clear values and goals of the leaders in order to accomplish success (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). Social network knowledge. The most important type of knowledge is social network knowledge, which consist the people to whom leaders’ are interacting with and relying in order to accomplish organisational goals (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). Organisational knowledge. On the other hand, organizational knowledge refers to the knowledge about people of a particular organisation, where the leader is acting. According to the observation, it can be asserted that good leaders’ responsibility is to ensure that each and every member of the organisation is equipped to make good judgment calls (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). Contextual knowledge. Consequently, contextual knowledge denotes the knowledge about stakeholders such as customer, supplier and stockholders among others. In order to make quality judgment calls leaders must engage with customers and suppliers for gathering contextual knowledge (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). From the analysis and evaluation it can be apparently asserted that in order to be good leader, a leader should gather these four types of knowledge to accomplish good judgment calls. Apart from this, in order to be a leader and attain success a leader must evaluate current position of the organisation. Moreover, according to the current position a leader must need to analyse desired position of the organisation in order to understand performance gap. During that phase a leader should smartly make judgment about people, strategy and crisis in order to achieve organisational goals significantly (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). At the same time, if a leader faced with difficulties in the course of attaining organizational goals then the leader must need to choose alternative strategy for its successful attainment. Thus, it can be asserted that leader should practice effective process of making judgment calls. It is a process, which starts with the leaders by recognizing or identifying the needs and framing those needs significantly. Apart from this, it continues through execution and adjustment by the leaders according to the circumstances. Moreover, in order to exercise good judgment calls a leader is required to possess several knowledge’s such as self-knowledge, social network knowledge, organisational knowledge and contextual knowledge (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). Thus, it can be apparently asserted that in order to implement successful decisions on behalf of an organisation, a leader should have clear idea and vision of the future for his/ her organisation. Consequently, leaders should keep motivated its team members over the times in order to maintain the values of the organisation and leaders must need to influence emotional energy in order to execute success significantly (Tichy and Bennis 1-392). Work Cited Tichy, Noel M. and Warren G. Bennis. Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls. USA: Penguin Group, 2007. Print. Read More