In April, when Duolingo’s CEO, Luis von Ahn, announced the corporate was going “AI-first,” he wasn’t simply making a strategic resolution. He was stepping right into a highlight few leaders envy. The choice was daring. The backlash was immediate and unexpected.
Critics called the rollout tone-deaf. Customers deleted the app. Commentators flooded social media with post-mortems on what the CEO ought to have carried out in another way. However right here’s what most individuals missed:
They weren’t within the room when the choice was made.
They didn’t carry the load of the trade-offs. They didn’t face the timeline, the inner debates, or the reputational danger. And so they didn’t must reply to stakeholders whereas making an attempt to guide by ambiguity.
Each high-stakes chief faces this dichotomy. A pharmaceutical government greenlighting a drug trial. A retail chief ending hybrid work. A startup founder accepting an acquisition and pivoting previous the purpose of no return. The specifics change, however the check stays: Will you default to knowledge alone? Cave to the loudest voice? Or, when no playbook exists, domesticate the discernment to evaluate your personal judgment first?
The Straightforward Entice: Judging by End result
We are likely to assume {that a} good decision-making course of results in an excellent outcome. However management doesn’t work that means. Outcomes are formed by numerous components, many exterior the chief’s management. The extra useful query is that this: Was the method for making the choice sound?
Analysis by Daniel Kahneman describes outcome bias because the tendency to guage choices primarily based on their outcomes, slightly than on the logic and context that produced them. In high-stakes environments, this bias is magnified.
Most individuals don’t understand how lonely management might be on the prime. Particularly while you’re making irreversible calls. You’ll be able to collect recommendation. You’ll be able to run fashions. However ultimately, somebody has to determine. And that somebody is commonly you.
That’s why judgment earlier than the judgment issues. It’s not about getting it proper. It’s about with the ability to reside with the way you selected. The method turns into your compass when the result is unsure.
What leaders want is a call framework that creates house to pause, earlier than the ultimate judgment. It may not assure an ideal end result, however it ensures a course of you may stand behind. And in high-stakes management, that’s what separates reactive selections from principled ones.
Management isn’t about predicting the longer term. It’s about making ready your judgment earlier than it arrives.
The Judgment Earlier than the Judgment Framework
Most individuals don’t understand how lonely leadership can be at the top. Particularly while you’re making irreversible calls. You’ll be able to collect recommendation. You’ll be able to run fashions. However ultimately, somebody has to determine. And that somebody is commonly you.
That’s why judgment earlier than the judgment issues. It’s not about getting it proper each time. It’s about with the ability to reside with and justify how you decided. The method turns into your compass when the result is unsure. It may not assure an ideal end result, however it ensures a course of you may stand behind.
As an government coach working carefully with CEOs and senior leaders I typically assist decision-making moments. This framework helps sharpen that course of by specializing in the three dimensions that matter most: views, strain, and integrity.
1. Views: Who’s within the room?
When strain builds, leaders typically default to voices they know and belief. However this could breed blind spots and echo chambers. The absence of stress typically alerts the absence of perspective. A McKinsey study on decision-making discovered that groups with various views have been considerably extra prone to keep away from pricey strategic errors. And but, underneath strain, many executives unintentionally exclude dissent, not as a result of they concern disagreement, however as a result of they crave certainty.
Purpose: Develop your inputs earlier than narrowing your choices.
Instance: When Microsoft was contemplating its dramatic shift to cloud computing, Satya Nadella intentionally included dissenting voices from throughout the group. “We would have liked the skeptics on the desk,” he later recalled in his memoir Hit Refresh. Cognitive friction and diverse thinking reduces blind spots. Leaders who deliberately invite challenges achieve a wider sight view and fewer regrets.
Ask:
- Who am I listening to?
- Whose voice am I unconsciously excluding?
- Have I actively invited challenges, not simply alignment?
Do that:
Assign somebody the function of “Shadow Stakeholder.” Have a staff member argue from the angle of somebody not within the room, a buyer, contractor, regulator, critic, or press. This prompts empathy and anticipates real-world backlash.
Open decision-making conferences with this query: “What are we not saying which may matter later?” It provides individuals permission to talk up, earlier than discomfort reveals up in aspect channels or quiet resistance.
2. Strain : What’s driving my urgency?
Urgency can turn into a type of self-deception. Leaders typically “borrow” strain from traders, media cycles, and opponents, and internalize it as their very own. What begins as exterior noise can quietly form timelines, tone, and trade-offs with out anybody naming it. By slowing down to look at the supply of urgency, leaders reclaim the flexibility to decide on slightly than react. While you title the supply of strain, you reclaim your authority.
The tempo of know-how nowadays is extremely quick. And research shows that rushed technological choices typically bypass deeper evaluation, resulting in selections that optimize fast outcomes slightly than the good thing about clients and society in the long run. Slowing all the way down to assess strain creates house for deliberate considering. Leaders have to handle tempo as a lot as they handle outcomes.
Purpose: Identify the strain so it doesn’t dictate the choice
Instance: When the pandemic hit in 2020, Zoom noticed day by day individuals leap from 10 million to over 200 million. The strain to scale was excessive. However CEO Eric Yuan acknowledged that the actual urgency lay not in scaling, however in belief. He paused new feature rollouts, declaring a “function freeze,” to concentrate on safety and privateness, naming the true strain drive. He named the strain precisely and responded with disciplined context, not response.
Ask:
- Is that this deadline mounted—or self-imposed?
- Am I feeling exterior strain, or emotional strain?
- What’s the actual price of pausing
Do that:
Ask 3 trusted colleagues to guage the choice independently. Don’t temporary them collectively. This surfaces noise reveals blind spots and provides you a clearer sign. As Daniel Kahneman suggests, evaluating impartial inputs reduces judgment bias earlier than consensus pressures kick in.
Map the strain chain. Establish who’s behind the urgency, board, media, opponents, and inner stakeholders, and ask: Whose strain am I absorbing? This turns urgency right into a diagnostic device as an alternative of a set off.
3. Integrity:Will I stand by this if it fails?
The true check of management isn’t whether or not a call works out. It’s whether or not the method can maintain underneath scrutiny, even when the result doesn’t go your means.
When technique, popularity, and velocity collide, and if values are usually not built-in into the transformation resolution, the outcome can really feel hole. Anchoring your resolution on a values-aligned course of ensures you’re explaining, not regretting, your selections.
Choices made with integrity construct inner belief and exterior credibility. They permit leaders to course-correct with out dropping ethical footing. When individuals belief your course of, they’re extra prone to keep engaged even by failure.
Purpose: Make the decision in a means your future self can defend.
Instance: When Patagonia’s founder transferred his ownership of the corporate to a belief devoted to preventing local weather change, the transfer mirrored many years of values-aligned decision-making, even at private monetary price. His purpose? To make sure the corporate’s earnings and governance align completely with its environmental mission, what Chouinard referred to as “going goal” slightly than “going public.”
Ask:
- Would this resolution align with our values if it have been scrutinized, not simply by shareholders, however by workers?
- Did I lead with readability, braveness, and transparency?
- Would I make the identical name once more—realizing what I do know now?
Do that:
Write the “failure postmortem” prematurely. It makes the stakes actual and forces you to confront blind spots earlier than they blind you. When you’re not happy with the logic that led you right here, that’s a sign.
Conduct a “knowledge friction audit.” Ask your staff what knowledge they hesitate to share, and why. This reveals cultural dynamics, misaligned incentives, or unstated fears that distort decision-making upstream.
What Duolingo’s CEO Acquired Proper—and What It Reveals
Again to Duolingo’s CEO. His “AI-first” announcement hit a nerve. However should you strip away the web outrage, you’ll see a pacesetter making an attempt to navigate a fast-changing panorama. Attempting to place the corporate for long-term success. Attempting to do what the function requires: make the decision.
Might the communication have been higher? Completely. Might the tone have extra immediately acknowledged the human and emotional price? Sure. However behind the missteps, you may see the indicators of a call made underneath strain, uncertainty, and in service of a bigger imaginative and prescient.
That’s a place many CEOs will discover themselves in—in the event that they haven’t already.
Thus, the query shouldn’t be, am I making a call that may result in the best end result however slightly, what course of do I have to make the choice so I can stand behind it with confidence no matter what occurs?
As a result of ultimately, your Duolingo second will come.
Your Duolingo second is inevitable. Not since you’ll face the identical alternative, however as a result of each chief’s judgment will get examined when the stakes are excessive and the trail is unclear. The query isn’t whether or not you’ll make the decision, it’s whether or not your course of will stand when others begin asking why. As a result of in the long run, individuals will decide your choices. Earlier than you make the decision, strengthen the judgment that may reside with it.
