2024 Needs to Be The Year That Good Judgment Makes a Comeback

As I was thinking about my first article of the year, I came across a post from Alex Lieberman that shared some decision-making advice from Jeff Bezos. It talked about "one-door" decisions that are consequential and hard to reverse and "two-door" decisions that can be reversed.

But the thing that popped for me was the comment about letting "high judgment" individuals make those two-door decisions.

Back in 2021, I shared some Gartner research on the importance and impact of good "digital judgment" on achieving outcomes from technology efforts. I then went looking for ideas on how to develop good judgment. They are easy to find so I won't share links here, but at the core is the idea of thinking about the consequences, both positive and negative, of a decision.

This is so obvious that it almost seems like it is not worth talking about.

But the problem is, in my opinion, that good judgment is sorely lacking right now.

• When I look at our buying research and see that only 17% of over 3000 purchases meet our low bar criteria for high quality deals, I wonder about judgment.
• When I hear stories of strategies that are based almost solely on volume metrics, I wonder about judgment.
• When I see strategies that largely treat diverse customers the same, I wonder about judgment.
• When I see approaches that add more and more process layers to try to force certain behaviors (basically treating almost everything as a one-door type decision), I wonder about judgment.

And I fear that an increased reliance on AI will further erode judgment.

This is one of the biggest problems that no one is talking about right now. For me, it is at the root of many of the issues we face in our lives, in businesses, and in our countries. It is downright depressing.

And it is so correctable. All it takes is a little bit of time and reflection. Thinking about the consequences of actions. Identifying ways to increase the odds of positive outcomes and mitigate against negative ones. Thinking about what additional data might be needed. Considering the opposite of a strategy.

Before I settled on this theme, I was wondering if I should bother continuing the newsletter this year. I felt like I would just end up repeating the same things I've been sharing for several years - the importance of ICPs, why psychographics matter, the issues that plague decisions. (Note: I may switch to every two weeks for new articles, but that is not finalized. Still judging the pros and cons ;).

If judgment continues to decline, then it will be more of the same. Let's hope I have other things to talk about in 2024.

The articles in this newsletter do not follow Gartner's standard editorial review. All comments or opinions expressed here are mine and do not represent the views of Gartner, Inc. or its management.