The Evolving Leader

‘The Art of Judgement’ with Sir Andrew Likierman

• Andrew Likierman • Season 7 • Episode 25

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In this episode of The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes is joined by Sir Andrew Likierman, former Dean of London Business School and one of the world’s leading experts on judgment. Drawing from decades of research across business, government, medicine, and the military, Andrew breaks down what judgment really is: the combination of personal qualities, relevant knowledge, and lived experience applied to a particular decision.

Together, they explore:

·       Why judgment is not the same as intelligence or expertise

·       The six components that shape every decision

·       How to spot (and avoid) bad judgment

·       The rising importance of human judgment in the age of AI

·       Practical ways leaders can develop and embed better judgment in their teams

Whether you're leading through uncertainty or navigating complex decisions, this episode offers essential insights into what makes judgment a critical (and trainable) human advantage.

Referenced during this episode:

‘Judgement at Work: Making Better Choices’ (A Likierman, 2025)


Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)

The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)


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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

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Jean Gomes:

Good judgement is something everyone would like to have and to be seen to have. It's also one of the most important human qualities that will differentiate us from AI agents. But it turns out it's remarkably difficult to define precisely, and many people are not sure whether they personally possess it. Sir Andrew lickerman of the London Business School has spent his life talking to leaders in a wide range of fields, from business and the army to law and medicine, in an effort to create a framework for understanding judgement. First, he had to define the word he now suggests that judgement is the combination of personal qualities with relevant knowledge and experience to form opinions and take decisions. He argues, the thus defined judgement involves a process taking in information, deciding whom and what to trust, summarising one's personal knowledge, checking any prior beliefs or feelings, summarising the available choices and then making a decision. At each stage, decision makers must ask themselves questions such as whether they have the relevant experience and expertise to make the choice, and whether the option they favour is practical. Expertise can be useful in making judgments, but it's not the same thing. Academics have expertise, he observes they don't necessarily have judgement. People with judgement know when they're out of their depth in making a decision, and typically then seek the advice of someone who has the right background and knowledge. In this fascinating conversation, Andrew ligament gives us a tour of his Lifetime's work into the art of judgement. Tune in to an important conversation in the evolving so welcome to the show, Andrew. Would you just give us a sense of who you are, your background and the things that you have done?

Andrew Likierman:

Right? Well, I've done a lot of very different things, and that is actually relevant to the subject at hand here, because I've had the opportunity to see good and bad judgement in many different contexts. So I started out in commercial life. I was involved with in manufacturing. I actually ran a textile plant in Germany. I then moved into academic life, I then moved back into commercial life, I then moved back into academic life. I then moved into government. I moved back into academic life, I moved into government again, and now I'm back in academic life and in academic life, I've been involved both as a teacher and researcher, but also as an administrator. So I was dean of the London Business School for a period of time, and while, as I said that I believe that's relevant is because I've seen just what good judgement can do and what judgement really why it's so important and why it's potentially so disastrous for organisations. Thank

Jean Gomes:

you. So it seems so obvious to us this word judgement. We all have a an understanding of it, but let's set the scene and describe what is judgement. What's the big picture here? And why do you think this conversation is so important right now?

Andrew Likierman:

Well, looking at the question of what judgement is, so I've defined it, and there is no standard definition. It's defined even differently in dictionaries around the world. What I've defined it ad as being the combination of the personal qualities that we have as individuals, and therefore what we bring to the judgement in relation to the relevant knowledge and experience we have in relation to this particular choice. And you've noticed that I'm talking about this particular choice, one of the reasons why, understandably, very little research is done in this area, is if each judgement is different to every other judgement. This is a nightmare, as far as research is concerned, in a conventional sense, because it's very, very difficult to pin down the reasons why things are different, and therefore to kind of make sense of a hypothesis which can be proved or disproved in a conventional, academic way. So for me, this is about very much the context of a particular choice and the way we approach that choice. This is really the key to the work that I've been doing.

Jean Gomes:

So we'll come a little bit more to the kind of ecosystem, or the kind of different aspects of what judgement is. But again, what does, what does bad judgement look like?

Andrew Likierman:

Well, I think we all know what bad judgement look. To that, because I'm sure we've all been the victim of bad judgement. When other people make bad judgments, they affect a lot of other people. A bad leader, bad here, defined as someone who has not got good judgement, can be disastrous for an organisation. I mean taking all the wrong decisions, making all the wrong choices, even making one single disastrous choice, can be enough to wreck an organisation. So it can be very bad indeed to be at the receiving end of bad judgement, which is why, you know, it's another reason why it's not just a question of saying, You know what, it's important to recognise and exercise good judgement, but also it's very important to not to exercise bad judgement and to recognise it in other people. Because if you hire somebody who's got bad judgement, and they're responsible to you. Well, it's a bit of a nightmare, because, you know, you can't rely on them. You can't trust them. I mean, they can do the most strange things. And you know, if you're the if you're their boss, then you carry the can for that. So I'm suggesting that bad judgement is very, very obvious. We see it. I mean, just take some examples in the press. Very often when people resign from senior positions, they say, you know, it was an error of judgement, and they are right very often, doing the wrong things, you know, cheating, whatever it is, you know, flouting the rules, doing some it's completely unacceptable, is bad judgement and the sadly, as I say, almost any scandal has got the words bad judgement or poor judgement, or It was an error of judgement, or it was a huge error of judgement, even attached to the resignations involved. So as I say, that's, you know, this is high stakes stuff

Jean Gomes:

in your recent book, which I loved judgement at work. And this is what kind of drew me to inviting you onto the show you make it that distinction of lots of different gradations of bad judgement, ranging from fairly mild everyday kind of things that we do to catastrophic types of error. And I suppose one of the problems that we've got is that this is conflated with intelligence and character and morality, even, and so on. Self awareness. There's a whole range of things there that when people talk about judgement, when you say someone's got bad judgement, you could be describing them as so can we look at this systematic approach, the components of judgement that you have started to identify?

Andrew Likierman:

So I'm approaching this with the assumption that all of us benefit potentially from understanding more about the processes that we make judgement about, that you know, in doing our jobs and indeed in our private lives as well, we know the stakes are high, and therefore it is worth approaching this more systematically than simply hoping for the best or assuming the experience we've got is enough and whatever it is. So that's the basis of which I say, Look, you really need to look this more systematically. And I'll be briefly go through the different elements involved here, and I'm happy to expand in more detail, if you like. The first thing is, and I've already alluded to it, it's the knowledge and experience that we bring to a particular action. Now, if we've done something 50 times, the 51st time is really pretty easy, because unless something's changed, let's assume it hasn't, then we bring a lot of knowledge and experience to bear. If we've never done something, then, frankly, the risks involved are much, much higher, and we need to recognise that even in our private lives, we go on holiday, you know, we go on holiday to a new place. Well, we've got to make quite a lot of assumptions on the way. We can help ourselves greatly by doing a number of things. I'm going to suggest. But you can see here the risks of not having done something before are there. And if we're doing something like a merger and acquisition, if we're doing something like a big IT project where lots is involved for the organisation, then this is not a trifling issue. So that's number one. Number two is the question of the awareness we have of. What's happening when we make our choice as part of a judgement. And that awareness can be about the situation the people involved, what their motivations are, understanding the dynamics in the room when a choice is made, things like that. This is very much the question of what's happening when the choice itself is being made. The third one is the trust we have in the people and the data and the information that we get. All of us rely on other people. We don't do things on our own. We rely on other people to help us with our gaps the knowledge and experience we don't have. We ask people, we ask experts so on, to come in and help us. Question is, can we trust them? And that's the third element here, allied to which we have the question of whether we have trust in the data that we get. Now, you know full Fake news is in the news, as it were, we know about that, but we know we have to be careful. The fact is, not everything on the internet is quality controlled, not everything that we necessarily get. I mean, even from chat GPT. I, you know, I asked chat GPT to direct me somewhere in a foreign capital, and I'm afraid it took me to the wrong place. But actually, you know, I'm that's partly because I gave the wrong instructions. But what I'm saying is, you can't just say, Oh, it's all right. Chat. GBT will answer all my questions in life, not quite enough. So number three, then, is trust. Number Four are the feelings and beliefs we have. Now, we all have feelings and beliefs. We come to any choice we make thinking, Well, you know, do I feel good about this? Do I feel optimistic, you know, and so on. So that whole area, which includes our biases and our prejudices and our values and all the kinds of thing, is really the kind of filters that we have through which all this information flows before we make a choice, and when probably not conscious most of it, but I'm going to argue we should be conscious of it, because it does affect the quality of our judgments that comes as number five brings us to number five, which is when we actually Make a choice. And we've all sat in rooms where we can see that the choice is being made on a very good basis, very rational basis. People argument. Arguments are taken account of. People argue and counter with each other to be there's a sense of getting what's best out of the room. And I'm sure we've all been in situations where, bluntly, this has not been so where you have a, let's say, a dominant chairman who basically squashes all dissent and just tells people really what they ought to be thinking. I mean, that's just one example of the way in which the process itself can go wrong. On the other hand, if it can be done, well, that's fantastic. Bringing all the data together, bringing all the contributions into the room together, and so on. Finally, there's the question for decisions we make of whether we can deliver it, because bluntly, it's no use saying, you know, I think this is a great idea if bluntly it's not deliverable. So I would say that ability to deliver is part of the mechanism. Now I've gone through those six, not always easy to remember, but that's what I mean by the components of the judgement process.

Jean Gomes:

And it's not, it's not an entirely linear process, is it? It

Andrew Likierman:

isn't No, and I've gone through 123456, but actually, in many cases, we might say, All right, let's say we get to a meeting to decide something. The meeting says, Look, we can either do this or we cannot do it. And somebody says, probably quite rightly, let's say, because the risks may be very high here, of saying, Look, why don't we try it out? Why don't we pilot it in one area first to see if it works, and then we'll perhaps do it thing. Now that's a third option which has been built for the choice now that may not have been thought about. So back you go to, if everybody agrees, actually that's a way of mitigating risk. Then back you go to have another chance at looking at what's involved in that. You might say, look, it's not feasible to do it for just a little bit of the organisation, to pilot it, whatever it is. And you may then eventually dismiss that. But let's say you do decide, at least to take it seriously, you'd need to go back to an earlier stage. So there is a process of reformulating ideas as one goes through the judgement process.

Jean Gomes:

In your research, when you look at this way of thinking about judgement, do you see kind of cultural differences where one aspect of this is stronger or. In different kind of cultures or parts of the world, or is it fairly, you know, kind of random?

Andrew Likierman:

No, I and this is something I was very conscious of in doing this work. I mean, I'm privileged to work at a business school which is incredibly International, and therefore I have access to people from, you know, many, many different countries around the world. I mean, we have, we have 106 countries currently represented on on campus. Now, I've also been around talking to groups in, for example, cultures which are seen as different, particularly different including Japan and China. And I have asked people there directly, look, do you think this applies to you? And for example, in Japan, I was told, Look, the process by which we make our choices is not the same as that as you do in the UK or Western Europe. We the process itself is different, but we recognise what you're saying here in terms of these different elements of the judgement process. And we don't think you would, you should change them for Japan. We would apply them, though, in a different way. So my sense is, and I see I've talked to people, you know, Argentina, I've talked to people in very, very different cultures in different parts of the world and and I've actually challenged and asked them to say, Do you think this would apply to you, or should I be thinking about something different for you? They have not come up with something which is different. So of course, everybody is different. Every organisation is different, every country is different. But I think the basis of looking at these big categories, I would say, is not universal, but can be applied almost anywhere.

Jean Gomes:

As you said at the beginning, you've been studying this for a long time, and you must have seen a change in how leaders make decisions, because obviously they're making a lot of decisions today in very shorter cycles of time, and kind of strategic planning cycles have sped up, and the complexity of organisations and so on, and the level of uncertainty. How are you seeing judgement changing in its relative importance or the nature of judgement during that time.

Andrew Likierman:

Well, you're right to say that things have speeded up. I mean, I think people are impatient to get on with things. You know, they the sort of lengthy research process which might have been fine two or three decades ago, people say the world is moving too fast. We can't afford to do that. I don't think that's any issue here at all in terms of the way one looks at judgement. Because what you're doing, in essence, you're saying, all right, we won't do an absolutely comprehensive study on whether we should enter this new market, whether we should have this product, whether we should hire this person, you know we will actually the thing needs to go faster. So I would say that's fine. You have also to recognise that if you're speeding things up, if you're not doing the kind of due diligence which you might otherwise chosen to do, then you have to recognise you are taking more risk. And you may say, that's fine. We've got to take certain risks. We're prepared to take the risks. So I don't think there's anything wrong or anything different about saying we're working in a world which is anxious to get on with things. You know, perhaps not as careful as as might have been seen to be right a while ago. But risk is really where, where you're at. You know, if you're prepared to take a risk, and you know all this is about taking risk, question is, how much risk you're prepared to take, then, you know, that's fine. I mean, I think, but you just have to understand what you're doing when you do it,

Jean Gomes:

yeah, and when you when you look at organisations which you're constantly talking to across these six different areas, how many do you do you see? What proportion Do you see that have a more systemic, systematic approach to judgement? Well,

Andrew Likierman:

one of the fascinating things for me is that actually there are very few organisations which look really carefully at this process. A lot of organisations, well run organisations will be doing quite a lot of this anyway, you know, they will try and make sure, I just give you one example, that when they hire somebody, there is a systematic process in place for hiring people, you know, and they will try and make sure that the final choice. Is not dominated by a single individual and so on. So this is the kind of thing which it seems to me, one needs to look out for if one isn't already doing it really well. And I'm not suggesting, you know, people who are involved in good practice suddenly have to rethink the good practice. Good practice is great. It's when you're not you know, when you're not sure about whether you've got good practice or not, whether you think to yourself, actually, you know, am I confident about this choice that we are about to make that particularly, you need to be aware of the process. So I would say, well, run organisations in general do this well, because one of the definitions of doing something well is exercising judgement well. And organisations that get themselves into trouble by definition, are not doing very well on the judgement front. So, you know, I think it's a kind of thing which it which is demonstrated by outcomes. My work is trying to help people not be part of those who are demonstrated to be doing things badly in terms of the outcomes. I mean, if you want to stat, as I keep on putting it, stack the cards in your favour of making a good choice, I think you ought to approach judgement systematically.

Jean Gomes:

So what are you advising leaders who want to build a culture of good judgement? And I'm thinking particularly this, the kind of self awareness piece around here, which is so critical to be able to stand back and go, you know, are we falling into intelligence traps or biases and so on. What do you do to encourage people to do that?

Andrew Likierman:

Well, the first thing, it seems to me, is that one needs to incorporate the idea that judgement is important in the way one hires people and assesses them and promotes them. So if you say, actually, we're looking for people with good judgement when you hire people. I mean, that's one of the criteria you should be using similarly in the appraisal process. Once you've got an idea of what judgement is, you can put that in as one of the things you're looking for, not just is somebody has got particular qualities in terms of their personality, but actually, have they got good judgement? It's something worth talking about at an appraisal interview annually, whatever it is. And also, if you're thinking about the question, can we move somebody up from this job to a more senior level job, one of the things that person is almost certainly going to be required to do is to exercise more judgement, because that's what seniority means. I mean, you know, why do we pay senior leaders large amounts of money for what they do? I mean, one of the things is because one relies on their judgement, and that is a not a quality one can take for granted. So building it in, first of all, Neil's building it in for who you hire and the way you promote people and the way you appraise them. And then there's the question of saying, Okay, let's identify what things we can improve. And you mentioned awareness. There's plenty of a way which you can get people to be more aware of what's going on around them. You don't have to say, I'm either born with it or I'm not, because, bluntly, this is something you can train people to do. And, you know, I in the book, what I do is, I, I've got a long list. I mean, it was even longer, but I, you know, I thought of myself. This is getting too long of things you can actually do. How can you, you know, get better at each of these elements of judgement? Well, there's lots of ways you can do it. I mean, no, the most obvious ones, of course, are to do with training. Are to do with learning from colleagues and so on. But there are a lot of ways in which you can improve individual parts of the judgement that you exercise. And it's not incredibly difficult and it's not incredibly expensive, you know, it's something which all of us can do. And you know, of course, I'm a biassed witness here, so I admit to that, but I reckon the payoff is pretty high in terms of, terms of what an organisation gets out of this.

Jean Gomes:

So as you know, I'm listening to this show, and I've got one of the world's most renowned experts in judgement, and I'm thinking to myself, Well, tell me what I could be doing right now to start improving my judgement. What are the kind of simple, practical things that anybody could start doing as a leader?

Andrew Likierman:

Well, I would say, you know that you need, you need, first of all, to identify what are the things that actually you think you're not terribly good at? What are your weaknesses? And I'm just taking. One completely, you know arbitrarily here, let's say you, your knowledge of artificial intelligence is not as good as it might be, and so you're not as aware of the potential for AI to be applied in your organisation. Now, you'll immediately have seen what the answer to that is, if you don't know enough about AI, we'll find out about AI, you know, get going. You know, make sure you understand the relevant bits so that you can make an informed choice about the applications of AI in your organisation. No, and each of us will have different ways of doing that, so there may be not much needed in one organisation and a lot in another. And you've got to think about the question then is, do I have the time? Can I do this? Let's say hypothetically, you can't. Then the question is, how can you get somebody with the knowledge, or people with the knowledge, to advise you on what you should be doing. And again, it comes back to its people you trust. Now I've just taken one example of one element of judgement, but in essence, what I'm suggesting here is one has to take stock of who one is and what one knows and what one does, and identify those things. And I think simply being aware of it, and one may not be aware of it, having not thought about this before in this kind of way, will lead you towards the actions which you need to take. You know, I'm not saying training core. Of course, I'm involved in training. So of course, you'd expect me to think training is great idea. But you know, the question is, what are you being trained at? And it's often something which is, can be quite precise and may not take very much time. So self identification, followed by action related to that is what I think one needs to do to help one on the way.

Jean Gomes:

You know, our show is very interested in how we navigate uncertainty, so I'm interested to get your take on how judgement helps us with prediction and forecasting and and embracing uncertainty. Well,

Andrew Likierman:

look, and we're all we're all subject to this. I mean, all of us, you know, and we, at the moment, we're living in a particularly uncertain world with a lot of variables involved that we bluntly haven't had before. You know, this is not like anything else the current uncertainty. But then that's been true over the last few years. If you add up the combination, know, of covid, which produced one kind of uncertainty, the Ukraine war produced another kind of uncertainty, and so on that, you know, we all having to grapple with this. All right, so in terms of the judgement process, forecasting is a very good area where you say, all right, how good is my judgement in assessing forecasts, I have people who work for me, and they produce forecasts. I read stuff in the technical press, I read stuff in the newspapers and so on. And we have experts talking about various aspects of the future. Now, I would argue that no, we know that it's forecasting is a really hazardous basis for No, for saying you know what is going to happen, because analogies are difficult. This current has uncertainty. I'm talking 2025 is not the same as 2024 or of 2020, or 2008 going back to the financial crisis, you know, every time we've got a different kind of uncertainty in relation to forecasting. So what do I suggest? I suggest that the two important, the two most important things you've got to think about in any forecast is who or what is making the forecast number one. In other words, do you trust this source? Do you believe this source is able to answer the questions you want. That's one. And the other person that's involved here is you. You're taking in this forecast. You're reacting to it. If somebody is telling you something you don't like the look of you, we will know that your tendency is to reject it and say, Oh, I think that's over optimistic, or I think that's over pessimistic, whatever it is. What judgement is all about is saying, What's my reaction to this forecast, and who is making the forecast. So it is not just a question of saying, have they actually done the. Sums right? Because the sums are the starting point. The end point is your belief or lack of belief in the forecast that you get.

Jean Gomes:

So you know, another way of putting that is, do you trust your own reaction to to the data? How do you help people to think about their feelings and beliefs and the influence, because that kind of emotional conviction can be very, very, you know, compelling in terms of feeling like it's truth.

Andrew Likierman:

It does and, and I'm sure all of us have a tendency to, you know, we mo we welcome the views that accord will our own views much more enthusiastically than something that's inconvenient or contrary to what we believe. So we tend to filter anyway. So the kinds of things I think one needs to do is to say, first of all, am I aware of my own biases, my own tendencies when I get information of various kinds, and becoming aware of them, and making sure that one understands why one is reacting in a certain way is the starting point really about improving one's one's abilities in this respect. Second way is the question of having people around one who provide counter views where required and you know, where something needs to be argued out. I mean, the difficulty many people have when they achieve a lot of power and they're surrounded by people telling them how wonderful they are is that they kind of lose perspective. You know, they only really want to hear the people who say the things that they already believe. And so it happens quite often, that somebody gets to a position of power and their judgement actually then starts to deteriorate because they become overconfident based on the position that they hold and the way in which others basically don't tell them the truth and don't provide counter views for fear of offending them in some way or jeopardising their own positions. So having people around you who don't necessarily just agree with everything you say and provide a good balance of views is, again, that seems to me, another way in which one has that greater sense of perspective. So it's understanding yourself, but also understanding your relation to other people and allowing them to help you make better judgments.

Jean Gomes:

What might be missing in the education system that would begin the journey for people to have better judgement? Because judgement doesn't just apply in in a business context. It applies in every other aspect of the choices that we make in our lives,

Andrew Likierman:

it does and and, you know what? What happens is we kind of pick these things up as we go along, you know? We make mistakes, and if we're wise, we learn from the mistakes, and we don't do it again, you know? And if you've once never made a mistake. That's probably because you're taking too little risk. So mistakes can be very valuable in terms of, you know, of getting, give, getting better judgement. So I think it's, it's a question of saying, as far as you know, looking at oneself, to say, how can I use my experience to improve what I do, as well as all the other things potentially that are going to help me on the way?

Jean Gomes:

You've taught several generations of leaders about judgement. Have you noticed any difference in the in the evolution of those generations regarding judgement, or is it pretty stable?

Andrew Likierman:

I'm quite I'm quite cautious about me, of that kind. I mean, I've had the, have had the privilege of teaching people over a number of decades. I've actually taught more than one generation of the same family. That's how long I've been at this and I think that people vary so hugely in who they are. I mean, obviously the cultural backgrounds are very, very important in terms of the way people approach things of this kind. So I'm going to avoid answering your question by saying, No, I don't think I can. I don't think I can. Decide I don't think I can. I because for me, it's very much about treating people as individuals, and in this particular case, I. You know, one may have grown up in a culture where certain things are the norm, but actually you're not the norm, so you don't conform to that. So no, I can't, I can't give you help on that one. I

Jean Gomes:

think, no, I'm with you on that one. I think this is something that we actually have a fairly contrary view in our in our world, in that we were very much on your side, that we don't really see these differences. Of course, there's a different context. If you were growing up, if I was growing up in this environment as a 20 year old, I'd probably react, but they're not sure that's actually the generational thing. I think that's just a context thing. So yeah, I'm with you. What else should we be talking about in terms of judgement? Where are the areas of greatest opportunity for leaders to expand their their judgement? Do you feel?

Andrew Likierman:

Well, look, I think I've talked a lot about weaknesses and remedying them. But I think one should also be thinking about one's strengths. And you know what the individual or the organisation is really good at, because that gives potentially comparative advantage if you're better at this kind of thing than your competitors, I mean, that is a big plus. And so I don't think it's a question simply of saying, you know, find out the things you're bad at and try and get rid of them, or least be aware of them. I think it's also a question of building your strengths, you know, building your capabilities. And again, if one thinks about an organisation which has a great capacity for making good choices. I mean, isn't that what just what you think about being a well run organisation means, you know, it can actually get to grips with the things that matter about its operations and its future and the way it operates in the world. And, I mean, I've seen organisations of this kind, you know, and they are wonderful to work for, because there's a sense of purpose, and there's a sense of, you know, the ability to turn purpose into action that is exhilarating. And similarly, I've worked in organisations where you just feel it's all a great big quagmire where nothing happens. Everything's bogged down in bureaucracy, you know, nothing ever gets done, and so on. And having having mentioned the word bureaucracy, I should also say that I'm not assuming here that all not for profit and public organisations, somehow don't exercise good judgement, because, again, I work for organisations which have been brilliant in this way, so the fact that you haven't got a profit motive doesn't mean to say suddenly you don't have good judgement. The quality of the people is really what matters. And you know, and that applies in both public and private sectors. So you know, I'm talking about a quagmire where, you know rules are more important than anything else, and you know you can't get anything done, and and so on and so on, and judgement then, is virtually impossible to operate in an environment like that. So you know, a new leader coming in and saying, What is the difference I can make? It seems to me, through the business of saying, how do we make our choices and how can we make our choices better? My belief is this is one way in which you turn a failing or mediocre organisation into a really good one.

Jean Gomes:

And we've touched on AI in the sense that you know we're part of the systematic approach to this is trusting your the sources of data, or assessing your trust in the sources of data and your own reactions to what that's happening. Can we talk about how AI is changing the game in judgement?

Andrew Likierman:

Well, what I think is is really, really interesting for me, is the relationship between between AI and judgement more generally, because I've been grappling, as part of the work I've done with the question, Can a machine exercise judgement? And in doing that, I've talked to a lot of people, some of the leaders in artificial intelligence. I've talked to philosophers. I've talked to people who are at the cutting edge of what's going on now. As a result of that, my belief is that the machine through through AI is going to become more and more and more sophisticated. We know that is so. And a number of things the machine will be able to do, which are bluntly, better than the human being. And I if I take the field of medicine, which I quote in my book, so what we know from a doctor who did a study on this is a lot of things that are wrong with one, bluntly, the machine is much better than a human being in finding out what's going on, because you can programme it to find out with a much higher degree of probability than human beings are able to offer. Now, that is fantastic. You know, that's really great, but it doesn't then mean, by extension, that the doctor will become irrelevant. In an age of AI, what the doctor is going to do, be able to do, is to do the things that AI can't do, which is, look at a patient with complex psychological issues allied to their physical issues, and say, I can see the pattern here, and the kind of approach I'd have based on many years of experience is we should approach it in this and this way. Now you can't programme machines to take account of these kinds of factors. The doctors will be much better and more gainfully employed for everybody doing detailed work, face to face with patients, which the machine cannot do, what the machine will be able to do. You can see I'm optimistic here. I declare my bias what the machine will be able to do is a lot of the routine work that the doctor currently has to do, freeing the doctor to do what the doctor does best. So my belief is that in an age of AI, one of the things that a human being will be bluntly left with to do and do well, potentially with the right training, the right background and so on, is to exercise judgement. So in terms of looking at who is going to be doing what in an age of AI, my belief is that judgement is going to become more important as what human beings do, juxtaposed with the increasing sophistication of the machine,

Jean Gomes:

and that suggests something in that example that you've given there, which is that the elements of what the human being are doing are in terms of psychological assessment, the ability to kind of reflect on that and understand how your beliefs and feelings are kind of interacting with with that data suggests that, if anything, the stakes for judgement go higher. It becomes more complicated. It becomes a more sophisticated skill that we have to develop, rather than relying on knowledge and experience, we're actually having to so what does that mean in terms of how we develop that? Because that's a very high order form of critical thinking and self awareness.

Andrew Likierman:

It is and, you know? And that's what human beings are amazingly good at at their best. You know, we are really, really impressive at doing this kind of thing. But no, it has to be recognised that this is something which human beings need to have, need to develop, need to provide, you know, without saying, Oh, my goodness, what? What is, what are human beings going to do? They're going to do a bit of this and a bit of that. Well, no, I mean, they're going to have to do some very, very precise things that human beings, where human beings have got comparative advantage and the people have got good judgement, it seems to me, are going to be in much higher demand than those who haven't, because they can offer more than the machine. If they can, if somebody's simply doing something, you know, more or less the same as or not as well as a machine, then I don't think they have a very rosy future. So that's another reason why I believe we ought to focus on judgement in order to equip ourselves in an age of AI to work with the machines.

Jean Gomes:

And that makes total sense. I guess. The question it begs then, from a commercial point of view, is, how do we measure judgement if we look at two doctors or two accountants who've got the equal kind of experience, track record, status, etc, etc, and then you're saying, well, the differential now in the future will be their judgement. How do you measure that?

Andrew Likierman:

Well, I, you know, I've worked with a regulator dealing with exactly this issue. So the regulator regulates professional firms, and the Professional Firms are required. Honoured to exercise professional judgement. Now the question is, so, what is professional judgement here? And if something has gone wrong, you know is, does that mean, therefore, that professional judgement wasn't exercised? The key element and distinction one needs to make here is to say, if there is a judgement process, and somebody can demonstrate that they have gone through the judgement process and done everything they can to achieve what was necessary, then that is a demonstration of good judgement. Why I'm focusing on process rather than outcome is that outcomes are determined by things which are nothing to do with our ability to exercise judgement. I mean, for a start off, we have luck. You know, luck is a key factor in success in a lot of things in life. Of course, you know, we like to say, oh, you know that was bad luck when things don't go for us. But quite often we say, well, actually, that's, you know, modestly, that was due to my excellent qualities, when things go in our favour, even though we may have had a great deal of luck, you can't link necessarily judgement at outcomes because of things like luck. I mean, the other elements are the to do with timing, that there may be the question of, know whether the data is good enough, and so on. There's lots of reasons why this is not a simple thing to do. So simply saying, you know, if something is successful, by definition, it must be due to good judgement. May not be right. It may simply be due to luck or the fact that other people you know, had a disaster on their hands, and that was actually benefited us, whatever it is. So for me, it's about the question of process. Can you demonstrate that you did everything you reasonably could to make a choice as good as possible? Now that is the exercise of judgement. So I would say judgement can be measured in terms of saying has a process been followed to give the best possible chance of success.

Jean Gomes:

Who do you think is doing that well outside of kind of regulated sectors? I mean, you meet lots of leaders who's kind of not falling into the trap of confusing outcomes driven by luck versus judgement.

Andrew Likierman:

Well, I would say all those people who may not have thought about Judgement itself, but these kind of techniques where people systematically look at the reasons for success and the reasons for failure and try and always try and improve what they're trying to do on the basis of learning from what went well and what went badly. Now the quality of analysis has to be there too, because you can't simply make a correlation and hope for the best because circumstances change. So the looking at outcomes has to be linked to a rigorous look at the reasons why things were as they were. I mean, if I just take analogies, you know, people say, well, it's just like last week or last month or the financial crisis or whatever it is. Well, actually it isn't. You know, life develops very, very differently. We it's difficult always to say that you have exactly the same thing going on. You mean, and you need to differentiate in each case. Is it exactly the same as last time? Are we aware that word again, awareness? Are we aware of what might be different? So I think here that you know, it's the learning part, which is fundamental to good management in any field, is an important part of judgement as well.

Sara Deschamps:

If the conversations we've been having on the evolving leader have helped you in any way, please head over to Apple podcasts and leave us a rating and review. Thank you for listening. Now let's get back to the conversation

Jean Gomes:

when we talked before you describe the pain of writing this book, because, you know, creating any kind of holistic, systematic approach to a topic where you're integrating lots of different disciplines is is very hard. It's a tough, tough thing to leave things out. So two kind of final questions, really. One is, what did you leave out that you'd like to bring back and put into into this conversation? And what's next for you in terms of your research?

Andrew Likierman:

Okay, leaving out? Well, I left loads up my right. I wrote the book, and my editor said, oh, you can't put all this in. It's unmanageable. You've got to leave lots of stuff out. So sadly, many things hit the cutting room floor. What's the what's the most interesting

Jean Gomes:

thing you left on the table?

Andrew Likierman:

Oh, goodness me, no, you've got me there. Think about that, okay, but in terms of what I'm excited by what happens now, because what I'm trying to do now, and my focus throughout this has been not, here is an interesting subject. Let me look at it. But how can I actually help people to make better choices? So what I'm doing at the moment is I'm applying it in many different areas. I mentioned professions, I mentioned regulation. I've already worked on independent judgement on the board, and what that is to help directors understand their legal obligations in in that area, I'm working with the family firm Institute on how to apply this within a family firm context. I'm working with various training bodies to see how I can help on the training process to get people better doing what they're doing. I'm working with financial institutions to help on the decision making process there and how they can improve that. So for me, this is a very exciting time to say, All right, let's see where we can apply this. Because since choice is pretty universal, you know, there's no limit to what's possible. So you can see why I'm kind of excited by the next stage,

Jean Gomes:

if you could get privileged access, I'm sure you've got very good access into lots of incredible places, but you're looking at the world right now and saying, there really needs to be some better judgement exercised here. Where would you Where would you like access to? There is

Andrew Likierman:

a very, very obvious place, very obvious person. But you know, I'm afraid even my wildest fantasies would not they're not listening, that I'm going to get anywhere near whoever that person is, who you anybody here might be thinking about? No, I mean, look, I'd be, you know, if people in positions of authority and positions of responsibility find this useful, then that is, that's, that's big for me.

Jean Gomes:

Yeah, well, I'm sure they will, because this is, as you say, the the differential that humans have in an automating world, and to be able to better understand your own capacity for judgement, identify the blind spots of the weaknesses, Shore those up, get extra support in, and then amplify the areas where you're strong, will give you that you know that forward kind of momentum in your career, and help you to build the organisation that you need to build. So I think that's a really great place to leave it, Andrew, and I'm very grateful for your time and how busy you are. So we're deeply appreciative of spending this hour with you. And everybody should get a copy of judgement at work. I read it over the summer, and it opened my eyes, to lots of things that were incredibly valuable for me as a as a practitioner, but also for my own business and development. So I thoroughly recommend that, and we'll leave details of Andrew's work in the show notes and link to the book as well. So remember, folks, the world is evolving. Are you?

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Jean Gomes

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Scott Allender

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