Making judgment calls is the essential job of every leader. To under- stand how critical it is to a leader's success, consider this: With good judgment, little else matters. Without good judgment, nothing else matters.
Take any leader: a U.S. president, a Fortune 500 CEO, an NFL coach, a wartime general, you name it. Chances are you remem- ber them for their best or worst judgment call.
Can anyone forget that Harry Truman issued the order to drop an atom bomb? When Richard Nixon comes to mind, so does Watergate. If you think of Bill Clinton, you remember the Monica Lewinsky scan- dal. And you can't think of John F. Kennedy without recalling how deftly