Good judgment is knowing what matters. It's distinguishing signal from noise. Seeing second-order effects. Understanding when rules apply and when they don't. You can have high intelligence and terrible judgment. You can ace every test and still make catastrophic decisions. Intelligence is processing power. Judgment is

2006. Steve Jobs approached Intel with an opportunity. Make the chips for a new product called the iPhone. Intel turned him down. The phones wouldn't sell enough to justify development costs. The decision you delay costs more than the decision you make. Intel didn't ignore mobile.

2008. MySpace was the world's largest social network. 115 million users. Then Facebook overtook them in April. What happened next wasn't gradual decline. It was a death spiral. We say growth and decline are opposites. Actually, they're the same mechanism running in reverse. MySpace

Everyone knows SpaceX fails fast. Blow up rockets. Learn. Iterate. What most don't know: How close it came to not working. 2006. Falcon 1 exploded 25 seconds after launch. Fuel leak. 2007. Second launch. Rocket tumbled out of control. Stage separation failure. 2008. Third launch. Collision during stage

Sears had a vision. One company, unified mission, customer-centric culture. Eddie Lampert had a better idea. 2005. He restructured Sears into 30 separate business units. Each with its own president, board, and P&L. Units would buy and sell services from each other through competitive bidding. Internal competition would

That quarterly strategy deck sitting in your shared drive? Beautiful vision. Market analysis. SWOT. Three-year roadmap with milestones. Can't tell you what decision to make Monday morning. We say strategy is the plan. Actually, strategy is the navigation. 1978. Honda and Yamaha went to war in the motorcycle