You came down with a headache and a fever. You took a couple of Tylenol, drank a big glass of water, went to bed, and the headache and fever were gone when you woke up. Are we done?
Some have already moved on: meeting, party, work, travel, whatever. There could be a lingering voice in the back of your mind, “You are not 100%!” But, for all practical purposes, just make sure there is some Tylenol nearby.
Some would go to a doctor to make sure there is really nothing else going on. The general expectation is that everything is fine, but better safe than sorry. The doctor checked you out. “You are just fine. Whatever gave you the headache and fever is no longer there.” Is that it? Are we done? Some will have walked out of the doctor’s office and moved on.
But what if that “whatever” is still there? What if there is a pandemic that the doctor has not been notified about? What if you have cancer? What if you were infected with ebola, bird flu, pig flu, MERS, whatever and the doctor missed it?
This is the question of judgment: the ability to take on incomplete information, weighing them on a set of vague value systems, rationalize them against some ideological goals, and make a decision. The decision is never right or wrong, since value systems or ideological goals are mostly personal. It is merely a matter of costs.
For leaders, or managers alike, such value systems and ideological goals are rarely obvious to the followers or employees. They are also extremely difficult to communicate, let alone convincing others that yours are more right than theirs. Typically, it is a matter of “I am the boss. We do things my way.” In real world, most people have no problem with that. Mature and reasonable people understand that someone must make that judgment and decision. Whoever it is, everyone wishes he or she is making the ones best for the company. After all, that’s why they pay him/her the big bucks.