Tools for Judgment
11
binding principles, or an all-purpose template. It is a working
philosophy. It is a disposition, an attitude, a habit of mind,
and a guide to action.
This philosophy says that the core of management work is
resolving hard problems in practical ways. It also says that, if
you want to be a successful manager today, you have to be able
to grapple with complexities of all kinds, draw sound conclu-
sions from a wide range of information, and use sophisticated
analytical tools. But, because gray area challenges are the core
of management work, these analytical skills aren’t enough.
You also need a humanist perspective on your work.
The word “humanist” can sound like something from a
traditional college catalog, but the thinking behind it is dir-
ectly relevant to making hard decisions at work and in life.
Humanism has a long tradition. Its roots go back to ancient
writers, and it became a strong force, intellectually and polit-
ically, during the Renaissance.
*
Humanists asked basic ques-
tions and tried to get down to the fundamentals about what
truly matters in life, what motivates people, and how the world
really works. These fundamentals become central when you
have worked through a gray area problem as a manager and
now must resolve it as a human being.
This humanist philosophy of management doesn’t try to
force the complex, messy challenge of resolving hard prob-
lems into some final, definitive analytical framework. It says
you have to examine a problem from a range of perspec-
tives. You have to rely on your judgment, which reflects your
*Appendix A gives a historical and philosophical overview of humanism
as it is used in this book.
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Managing in the Gray
12
thinking, feelings, intuitions, experiences, hopes, and fears.
And it says that, in the end, the right answer to a gray area
problem is what you decide is right—but only after work-
ing through a problem in its full analytical and human
dimensions. This way of thinking is hard to distill into a few
words or phrases but it is, I believe, the tacit worldview of
the successful, responsible men and women who find ways to
navigate the gray areas all around us.
Chapter_01.indd 12 10/06/16 10:43 PM
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