Field Note #2: On Shifting from Information to Judgement

I've noticed a shift in my coaching conversations.

Not with every leader, but often enough to make me think.

In the past, people have sought coaching for clarity, confidence or both (even when they name it something else). They have openly sought another perspective, a better question, or someone to challenge their thinking. Baked into that was an assumption that enough of the right information would make the right decision obvious.

Increasingly, I'm seeing something different.

Most of the leaders I work with have already done the thinking. They've spoken to their teams, sought external advice, read the reports and explored different perspectives. Typically, they have more than enough information. The problem is that there are several thoughtful, credible ways of interpreting it.

I've found myself wondering whether this is one of the defining shifts in leadership.

For much of my career, access to information has been a differentiating factor. Experience mattered because you'd seen things others hadn't. Networks mattered because they gave you access to perspectives others couldn't easily reach. Expertise mattered because it helped you interpret what everyone else was still trying to understand.

I'm not convinced that's as true anymore.

Information has become dramatically more accessible. Expertise is easier to find, diverse perspectives are easier to access and good analysis is no longer confined to a handful of people or organisations.

The irony is that better access to information doesn't make decisions easier; it makes them harder because there are more credible ways of making sense of what we know.

When every option is supported by credible evidence, thoughtful analysis and intelligent people, the challenge becomes about deciding what deserves your confidence, what matters most in this context, and what trade-offs you're prepared to make.

I've been searching for the right word to describe that capability.

For a while I've played with wisdom as a proxy to capture the idea.

Wisdom feels like something we recognise in hindsight. It's a quality we attribute to people whose judgement has consistently stood the test of time.

I think we're talking about something earlier than that: the capability leaders draw on when the evidence is incomplete, the trade-offs are real, and nobody knows whether today's decision will turn out to be the best one.

I think judgement captures it better.

Not because it replaces curiosity, experience or frameworks, but because it depends on all of them.

Curiosity broadens our perspective, critical thinking tests our assumptions, experience gives us patterns to recognise, and frameworks help us organise our thinking. They all matter.

Judgement is what synthesises them into action.

Working hypothesis

As information becomes more abundant and more accessible, I wonder whether the capability that differentiates leaders is shifting from acquiring knowledge to exercising sound judgement.

The bigger question

As information has become abundant, what has become scarce?

Questions I'm sitting with

• Can judgement be deliberately developed, or does it emerge only through experience?

• If wisdom is the reputation we earn through consistently good judgement, how do we help leaders develop judgement earlier in their careers?

• How do we strengthen judgement in a world where information is increasingly abundant?