Most leaders are not lacking judgment.
They are lacking clean inputs. Good context. Sometimes, a general curiosity to understand.
AI can fix two of those things.
By the time a decision reaches a senior leader, it is often wrapped in six emails, three Slack threads, a deck, two side conversations, a deadline that is now their problem, and the risk of it all dumped into their lap.
From there, what happens next is highly dependent on the leader and their risk tolerance.
The risk-averse are going to shut the project down until they have clarity, which is the death knell of many workstreams.
AI can help enormously here by cleaning the decision surface:
- What happened?
- What changed?
- What are the options?
- What are the risks?
- What is the recommendation?
- What evidence supports it?
- What decision is actually needed?
That last one is underrated.
A shocking amount of “decision-making” is just ambiguity pushed forward with confidence. An equal amount of organizational slowdown is caused by ambiguity halting the process.
AI should make the actual decision visible, the risk understood, and the context and history known.
Then there is an ownership of both the decision and the outcome that everyone can live with.
The future of AI is likely not machine judgment.
It is better-prepared human judgment, assisted by AI.
