HBR Guide to Making Better Decisions

CHAPTER 14

How to Tackle Your Toughest Decisions

by Joseph L. Badaracco

Every manager makes tough calls—it comes with the job. And the toughest calls come in the gray areas—situations where you and your team have worked hard to gather the facts and done the best analysis you can, but you still don’t know what to do. It’s easy to become paralyzed in the face of such challenges. Yet as a leader, you have to make a decision and move forward. Your judgment becomes critical.

Judgment is hard to define. It is a fusion of your thinking, feelings, experience, imagination, and character. But five practical questions can improve your odds of making sound judgments, even when the data is incomplete or unclear, opinions are divided, and the answers are far ...