In one of Tom Davenport’s recent books, Judgment Calls: Twelve Stories of Big Decisions and the Teams That Got Them Right, he and co-author Brooke Manville offer “an antidote for the Great Man theory of decision making and organizational performance”: organizational judgment. That is, “the collective capacity to make good calls and wise moves when the need for them exceeds the scope of any single leader’s direct control.”

I again recalled that passage when reading and then re-reading Cass Sunstein and Reid Hastie’s recently published book, Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter, published by Harvard Business Review Press (December 2014). Their objective is to help teams make better decisions. In my opinion, these are the most valuable lessons to be learned from the abundance of information, insights, and counsel they provide.

o Make absolutely certain that the team’s focus in on answering the right question, solving the right problem, etc.
o When in group discussion, team leaders should devote at least 80% of their time listening and observing; no more than 20% speaking.
o They should strongly encourage a diversity of perspectives, especially principled dissent.
o When obtaining the information required by the given process of decision-making, all relevant sources should be consulted.
o In terms of division of labor, tasks should be assigned to those best-qualified in terms of knowledge, experience, and judgment.
o Implementation of a decision should be sufficiently flexible to accommodate unexpected changes.
o Use a “devil’s advocate” approach when subjecting each option to rigorous scrutiny.
o Then consider using a “red team” approach to challenge the primary team during its implementation of the given decision.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out two others: Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow and Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls, co-authored by Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis.