Little Things: Judgment (since recanted)
In the ‘Little things’ series, I critique small tendencies that can have a significant impact on our professional and personal performance. This first one is on ‘judgment,’ and how it can be a disastrous trait.
Update April 2022. — Recanted.
I’ll leave the article up, but to be honest, I don’t think I believe in a lot of this. I still think it’s important to remain open to changing your mind when new information surfaces and is verified (and you can be the judge (wink) on how you go about doing that), but a lot of this article is from a naive perspective of me trying to figure out “stuff” post-college. So you can mix in “wanting to have a voice”, “wanting to find new friends”, and “wanting to be open while reconciling previously held beliefs” for the mindset I was in while writing this article.
If you feel like you’re being unfairly judged or are feeling like “damn I’m doing a lot of judging recently” (supposing you aren’t an actual judge), maybe those are conversations you need to go have.
Thanks,
Sid.
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Original article as follows (Jan 2020):
Failures of professional performance and personal relationships are rooted in judgment.
Let’s first define judgment, and how it differs from opinion. Both judgment and opinions are formulations of a personal conclusion based on inputs that we’ve received. Opinions are open ended, growing, and subject to change based on new information and inputs. Opinions are important and valuable; our opinions separate us from the non-sentient. Judgments, however, are closed, final, and sometimes they’re directed at someone/something else to label or categorize. Think about a criminal court judge — they receive inputs from the attorneys, witnesses, and the jury, from which they make a final ruling — a judgment of guilty or not guilty.
Maturity is recognizing that our opinions, no matter how complex they are, are based on incomplete context, and that they too can change based on shifting circumstances. This does not mean to not stand your ground when your opinions are challenged; rather, it’s to recognize that the person sitting opposite you has a perspective that is, like you, based on inputs that they have reasoned to be true. It means being open to the possibility that you might not be right, and being open to compromise and bridge gaps with a reasoned give and take.
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Closed eyes in the industry
Let’s take a look at the case of Barry Root to see how these tendencies can cause disastrous results.
For decades, Barry Root poured time, sweat, and tears into his work at his company, Technomica. Having commanded effective leadership skills and the emotional intelligence to match, he moved quickly up the ranks to become one of the chief executives at the company. Technomica’s devices had been successful for years in the enterprise and consumer sectors, but his confidence in their healthy, growing market share clouded his perspective. His experience and ego drove myopic notions on what a successful portable product could be, and when competing but radical competing innovations emerged, he relied too heavily on his preconceived judgments and categorized ‘radical’ and ‘different’ as ‘wrong.’ It was his fatal mistake. Over the next few years, Technomica’s competitors clawed away at their market share and the company never regained the dominant position they once had.
Technomica may be a fake company, but this scenario is anything but; these disasters have affected some very real companies in the past — take a look at watchmaking, photography, and smartphone industries, and you’ll find examples of companies that were on the cusp of market dominance, but fell from grace after failing to recognize and adapt to changing circumstances. It’s important to realize that the mistakes here aren’t the accidental and normal failure to recognize new info (the ‘blinks’) so much as a closed, fixed mindset to new, different, and potentially radical opportunities for growth (‘closing your eyes’). It’s a judgment, and a wrong one, that what has always worked will continue to work, and anything else is wrong.
Let’s zoom in to a situation that you might encounter in a professional setting. Let’s say that you’ve worked on a transformational project where you have driven success, due to a variety of factors such as an effective engagement of stakeholders, a clear understanding of the scope, and an ability to drive results in a timely fashion. Now you have another project that is similar to your previous one. Perhaps your solution could simply scale to this new situation. However, it wouldn’t be right to skip ahead to implementing the solution, just because you’ve quickly judged the situation to be the same as the previous one. Of course not. Not all situations, though they may look similar at first glance can be solved in the exact same way. Having a standardized framework can be helpful — but the solution itself is going to be dependent on the unique context of the situation that you’re working with. Recognize that our snap judgments of situations and people around us can lead down a dangerous path, and instead take a step back and consider and accept the complexity inherent to every experience that you encounter.
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A personal lapse of ‘judgment’
Time for a personal story. It’s no secret that I love, support and listen to my family and friends, while at the same time pushing them to be successful and develop themselves. However, a little more than a year ago, I got on a high horse of judgment, and that quite nearly hurt some of the healthiest friendships I had.
At the time, I was beginning to experiment with meditation and the detox of social media to focus on myself. And no doubt it was beneficial and worked for me. I felt less anxious and less distracted, and found more time for my priorities. Sharing what worked for me, now that’s being a good friend. However, I remember that I was trying to push one of my best friends to jump on the bandwagon, believing that she was missing out for not getting involved in the practices that I had picked up. To this day, I am grateful that she was able to take a step back and take a constructive outlook on my judgment — but I got lucky. Not everyone is as kind and understanding.
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It’s important to recognize and celebrate those perspectives and hobbies that have worked well for you. But believing that your perspectives are more important and valuable than someone else’s is judging — it’s not taking into consideration their individual context and that what works for you might not be compatible with them — and it can be arrogant.
Having and sharing your opinions is a part of engaging in our shared human experience. Just keep an open mind while you’re at it.
