He can be faulted for not originally sensing and identifying the need for dealing with the crisis earlier, because there were those inside the company and outside who saw some of the signals.

The optics were not good, nor was her popularity in HP. To make matters worse, HP missed more than half of its earnings targets during her tenure.

Within each domain, leadership judgments follow a three-phase process: preparation, the call, and execution.

“The ultimate test of management is business performance. Achievement, rather than knowledge, remains, of necessity, both proof and aim.”

Soon after he became CEO of General Electric, Welch had a meeting with Drucker. As they discussed GE’s various businesses, Drucker, Welch recounts, asked him at one point: “If you weren’t already in this business today, would you go into it?” It was a question that crystallized Welch’s thinking and ultimately resulted in his famous “#1, #2, fix, cl

In the late 1990s, a group of midlevel students at GE’s Crotonville leadership institute challenged him, saying that the “#1, #2, fix, close, or sell” strategy was hurting the company because executives were gaming the system.

1. First of all, judgment is the core, the nucleus, of leadership. With good judgment, little else matters. Without it, nothing else matters.

People calls are often viewed as win-lose decisions for various players in the organization, and as such they unleash the most powerful of political forces in an organization.

The single most important thing that leaders do is make good judgment calls. In the face of ambiguity, uncertainty, and conflicting demands, often under great time pressure, leaders must make decisions and take effective actions to assure the survival and success of their organizations.