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A few weeks ago, I interviewed a CEO for a senior executive position. As our meeting came to an end, one of his answers led me to reflect on a question that often goes unnoticed when assessing senior leaders.<\/p>\n
We had been discussing growth, transformation, business performance and leadership when the conversation turned to a strategic decision he had made years earlier one that he eventually chose to revisit.<\/p>\n
What caught my attention was not the fact that he had changed his decision. What fascinated me was understanding why. What had changed in the business environment? Which signals had prompted him to reassess his original thinking? And how had he managed that shift within the organisation?<\/p>\n
Because when organisations appoint a CEO, a Managing Director or another member of the executive leadership team, they are not hiring someone to repeat yesterday's decisions. They are hiring someone to navigate new challenges, unfamiliar situations and circumstances that are unlikely to resemble those in which their previous success was built.<\/p>\n
That leads to an interesting question. Experience can be assessed. Judgment is far more difficult to identify.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In executive search, a significant part of the assessment process is devoted to understanding an executive's career path and how it has evolved.<\/p>\n
We examine the results they have delivered, the complexity of the organisations they have led, the transformation initiatives they have driven, the size of the teams they have managed and the international scope of their experience. All of these factors remain essential. Experience is still one of the strongest indicators of what an executive has achieved and the environments in which they have demonstrated their capabilities.<\/p>\n
However, when assessing senior executives, experience primarily answers one question: What has this person accomplished so far? The greater challenge is answering a very different one: How will this person make decisions when the next challenge bears little resemblance to anything they have faced before? That is where executive judgment comes into play. Not as intuition or an innate talent, but as the ability to interpret reality, integrate new information, navigate uncertainty and make sound decisions when there are no obvious answers.<\/p>\n
Because two executives may have equally impressive track records and yet respond in completely different ways to the same situation.<\/p>\n
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Every leader needs confidence. Without it, it would be almost impossible to make difficult decisions, mobilise an organisation or stay the course when the first challenges arise.<\/p>\n
However, confidence also has a less visible side. Economist Ulrike Malmendier, Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, together with Geoffrey Tate, has spent years studying the impact of overconfidence in senior leadership. Their research shows that CEOs with higher levels of overconfidence tend to take greater strategic risks, pursue more acquisitions and invest more aggressively.<\/p>\n
The conclusion is not that confidence is a bad thing. Quite the opposite. Without confidence, there is no leadership. What is particularly interesting is that overconfidence can make it more difficult to do something essential: reconsider a decision when new evidence suggests it should be reconsidered. This is rarely a question of intelligence. Rather, it reflects the cognitive biases to which we are all susceptible. The more success we accumulate, the easier it becomes to believe that our judgment will remain equally valid regardless of changing circumstances.<\/p>\n
Yet the business environment is constantly evolving. Markets change. Technology advances. Regulations shift. Customers' expectations evolve. And effective decision-making must evolve with them.<\/p>\n
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If judgment is so important, the question is inevitable. How can we get closer to understanding it during an executive search process?<\/p>\n
There is no formula capable of measuring an executive's judgment with the same degree of objectivity with which we evaluate their track record or results. However, there are certain conversations that help us understand how an executive exercises their decision-making ability.<\/p>\n
1. Analyze the context, not just the outcome<\/strong><\/p>\n Results matter. A great deal. But on their own, they do not always reflect the quality of a decision.<\/p>\n Leading 20% growth in an expanding market does not require the same judgment as achieving it in a declining industry or in a highly uncertain environment. Nor is transforming an organization with abundant resources comparable to doing so in a company undergoing restructuring.<\/p>\n That is why, beyond the outcome itself, it is important to understand the context in which it was achieved. Only then is it possible to assess the true significance of the decisions that were made.<\/p>\n 2. Understand difficult decisions<\/strong><\/p>\n The most insightful conversations rarely arise when an executive talks about their greatest successes. They happen when they explain a particularly complex decision.<\/p>\n What alternatives did they consider? What information did they have at the time? What risks did they take? What trade-offs did each option involve?<\/p>\n More than the specific answer, what matters is understanding the thought process that led to the decision. That is where qualities that rarely appear on a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 often emerge: analytical ability, a strong sense of priorities, and the ability to make decisions with incomplete information.<\/p>\n 3. Explore how they incorporate new information<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the most revealing aspects of sound judgment is the ability to adapt a decision when the context changes.<\/p>\n Organizations evolve constantly, and strategies rarely remain unchanged for years. That is why it is particularly insightful to understand how an executive responds when new information challenges an initial assumption.<\/p>\n Do they seek additional information? Do they listen to different perspectives? Do they rethink their approach? Or do they devote more energy to defending the decision they have already made?<\/p>\n The goal is not to change course too easily, but to know when to stay the course and when to reassess.<\/p>\n 4. Observe how they handle disagreement<\/strong><\/p>\n At the executive level, well-managed disagreement often leads to better decisions.<\/p>\n That is why it is valuable to understand how an executive reacts when someone challenges their thinking. Not because there is a single correct way to handle such situations, but because the way they engage with differing opinions often reveals a great deal about their leadership style and the level of trust they place in their own team.<\/p>\n Organizations where every decision is accepted without debate are rarely the ones that produce the best solutions in complex environments.<\/p>\n 5. Look for patterns, not perfect answers<\/strong><\/p>\n Sound judgment rarely reveals itself in a single answer. It emerges throughout the conversation in the way someone explains a success, a failure, a strategic shift, or a disagreement with the executive team.<\/p>\n When certain behaviors, arguments, and ways of dealing with uncertainty consistently appear across different moments in the interview, they begin to form a pattern. And that pattern provides a far more complete picture of the executive's decision-making style.<\/p>\n Judgment is rarely found in a single brilliant response. It is reflected in the consistency across many responses.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After many years of interviewing executives, I have become increasingly convinced that the goal is not to identify people who always make the right decisions. They do not exist.<\/p>\n The real challenge is to recognize those who can continue making sound decisions when the circumstances no longer resemble the ones that originally led to their success.<\/p>\n Experience will always remain one of the best indicators for assessing an executive. But the greater the uncertainty, the more important another far harder to observe capability becomes: judgment.<\/p>\n At the end, organizations do not hire executives to manage the past. They hire them to build the future.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Experience and track record will always remain essential when evaluating an executive. However, when circumstances change, the real differentiator often lies in a far less visible competency: judgment. How can we gain meaningful insight into it during an executive search process?<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"disabled","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/raquellorenzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/raquellorenzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/raquellorenzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raquellorenzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raquellorenzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5766"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/raquellorenzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5783,"href":"https:\/\/raquellorenzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5766\/revisions\/5783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raquellorenzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/raquellorenzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raquellorenzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raquellorenzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The challenge is not to find infallible executives<\/strong><\/h6>\n