And then there were four as Terry Jones died yesterday. He was a founding member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, who set the standard for modern comedy in the second half of the 20th century. Yet he was much more than a gag writer. According to his New York Times obituary, he was also a successful director, screenwriter and author. Jones, together with “four other Britons — Michael Palin, Eric Idle, John Cleese and Graham Chapman — and an American, Terry Gilliam, formed Monty Python in 1969. Their television sketch show, “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” became a phenomenon, first in Britain and then in the United States when it was rebroadcast there in the mid-1970s.” I am not quite sure what more to say about Jones so I will end my tribute to him by asking you NOT to say a word; of Course, that word NOT to say is “NEE”.
I thought about Jones in connection with one of the key components for any successful compliance professional; yet one rarely discussed, that being judgment. I was therefore intrigued by a Harvard Business Review article on the topic by Sir Andrew Likierman, entitled “The Elements of Good Judgment: How to Improve Your Decision-Making”. I thought his piece was so significant I am going to spend the next couple of blog posts considering it in the context of the role of a Chief Compliance Officer (COO) or compliance professional.
The concept is relatively straight-forward. As compliance moves more towards the embracing of data and incorporation of data, business processes and efficiencies into its realm, the more compliance professionals, especially those legally trained, will have to move away from the rigid legal strictures laid down in law school training. This is because a core business function is to take ambiguous evidence and form views and interpret it in a way that will lead to a good decision.
Most of us have heard, been told or believe that you should always ‘listen to your gut’ and that ‘gut instinct’ is something you either have or you do not. As Likierman noted, “A lot of ink has been spilled in the effort to understand what good judgment consists of. Some experts define it as an acquired instinct or “gut feeling” that somehow combines deep experience with analytic skills at an unconscious level to produce an insight or recognize a pattern that others overlook. At a high level this definition makes intuitive sense; but it is hard to move from understanding what judgment is to knowing how to acquire or even to recognize it.”
In considering the topic, Likierman did not find any clear framework to think through what creates good judgment. One thing that decidedly does not create good judgment is past performance. I found this interesting, prior performance is usually a good indicator of good judgment going forward. There may be other things in play, “The multigenerational success of some German midsize companies and the sheer longevity of Warren Buffett’s investment performance are frequently cited examples. But success can have other parents. Luck, the characteristic that Napoleon famously required of his generals, is often the unacknowledged architect of success. Those in sports can vouch for the importance of luck as well as skill. Grant Simmer, successively navigator and designer in four America’s Cup yachting victories, has acknowledged the help of luck in the form of mistakes made by his competitors.”
Interestingly, Likierman finds it all starts with listening and, more importantly, good listening. Listeners to my podcast series 12 O’Clock High, a podcast on business leadership will recognize that as a key trait for almost any successful business leader. Yet, perhaps even more significant, is that he has found that “leaders with good judgment tend to be good listeners and readers—able to hear what other people actually mean, and thus able to see patterns that others do not. They have a breadth of experiences and relationships that enable them to recognize parallels or analogies that others miss—and if they don’t know something, they’ll know someone who does and lean on that person’s judgment. They can recognize their own emotions and biases and take them out of the equation. They’re adept at expanding the array of choices under consideration. Finally, they remain grounded in the real world: In making a choice they also consider its implementation.”
Likierman identified six key elements of good judgment. They are: (1) learning, (2) trust, (3) experience, (4) detachment, (5) options and (6) delivery. In tomorrow’s blog I will take a deep dive into each, both defining them and giving you actionable steps to take away to improve your judgment making skills and help you make some sense of not only ambiguous information but the data, data, and data which will become the basis of many corporate compliance decisions in 2020 and beyond.
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