Guest commentary: The real constraint isn’t effort, it’s judgment
By Eric Zackrison
“Work harder” is the default response to underperformance in most organizations.
Miss a target? Increase activity. Fall behind on goals? Add more meetings, more outreach, more effort. The assumption is that results are a function of volume — and that volume is something you can simply decide to increase.
In some contexts, that’s true. In most leadership environments, it isn’t.
The real constraint is usually judgment.
THE RESOURCE ALLOCATION PROBLEM
Whether you’re leading a sales team, a department, or an entire organization, the work is fundamentally the same: deciding where to direct finite resources — time, attention, capital, political will — under conditions of uncertainty and incomplete information.
Those decisions don’t have algorithmic answers. They require interpretation, pattern recognition, and the ability to assess a situation before all the facts are in.
Organizations that treat performance as purely an execution problem miss this. They optimize for volume when the actual constraint is decision quality. The result is predictable: effort goes toward the wrong priorities, progress stalls across too many fronts simultaneously, and the people with the best instincts — the ones who know how to focus — leave for environments where their judgment is valued, not just their activity levels.
This dynamic shows up everywhere. Capital budgeting. Hiring decisions. Strategic planning. Organizational change. The feedback loop is different in each context, but the underlying problem is the same: we’re making resource allocation decisions constantly, and most organizations have no systematic way to develop the judgment those decisions require.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BUSY & STRATEGIC
Early in building my consulting practice, I attended every networking event, took every meeting, and treated every inquiry as equally worth pursuing. The result was exhausting — and ineffective.
Once I started applying more disciplined prioritization — focusing on clients whose challenges matched my expertise, walking away from projects that weren’t good fits — revenue increased and the work became more substantive. Less activity. Better results.
The shift wasn’t about working harder. It was about working with more intentional criteria for where effort was worth investing.
This is the distinction between transactional thinking and strategic thinking. Transactional thinking optimizes for immediate action — the next meeting, the next deliverable, the next short-term win. Strategic thinking optimizes for long-term positioning — which relationships to invest in, which opportunities are worth pursuing now versus later, which commitments will compound over time.
The Water Resources department strategic retreat I facilitated earlier this month? That relationship started five years ago — years of staying in touch and building trust with no immediate project on the horizon. Strategic thinking means maintaining that kind of investment even when the return isn’t visible yet.
WHAT GOOD JUDGMENT LOOKS LIKE IN PRACTICE
People with strong strategic judgment share recognizable patterns.
They know when to say no. They recognize that declining a low-fit opportunity creates capacity to say yes to a high-fit one. They don’t treat activity as the primary success metric — they treat focus as the constraint that matters.
They think in portfolios, not transactions. Not every opportunity will yield results this quarter. Some relationships take years to develop. Portfolio thinking means balancing quick wins with longer-term bets, and maintaining presence even when immediate returns aren’t visible.
They know when to involve others. Recognizing when a situation requires a different perspective, additional expertise, or broader input isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of judgment — the ability to assess what a situation actually requires.
And critically, they’ve built systems that support judgment rather than replace it. Consistent meeting structures, clear decision processes, and explicit accountability frameworks aren’t bureaucratic overhead. They’re tools that make decision-making visible, improvable, and shared across a team.
THE QUESTION WORTH ASKING
If results aren’t where they need to be — in a team, a department, or an organization — the instinct to increase activity is understandable. It’s also usually wrong.
The better question is whether people have the judgment to direct their effort strategically. Whether they can distinguish high-value priorities from low-value ones. Whether they know when to push forward and when to walk away.
That’s harder to measure than activity. But it’s almost always where the real leverage is.
• Eric Zackrison is a professor at UC Santa Barbara’s Department of Technology Management.
