A lovely, happy dog that I often dog-sit was given a death sentence by a vet because she doesn’t move like a “healthy” dog (duh, she’s 14) and might be in too much pain later.
His recommendation was to KILL her now. WTF?!
It wasn’t a failure of expertise. It was a failure of judgment.
So-called experts are trained to blindly follow protocols, compare situations to benchmarks, and manage decisions at scale. That’s useful but incomplete.
In contrast, leaders are responsible for assessing reality as it actually exists in a specific, individual case. In this instance, tomorrow’s hypothetical scenarios were used to justify an irreversible decision today.
That’s not judgment. That’s outsourcing intelligence to a framework.
This shows up everywhere in business:
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Consultants pushing standard playbooks that don’t fit your business.
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Bankers recommending “market” deals that misalign incentives.
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Boards relying on old industry standards in a rapidly moving market.
Use experts for input. Make your own decisions. That’s the job.
woof,
Navin
P.S. When has an expert—medical or otherwise—confidently recommended something that turned out to be wrong?
P.P.S. See the picture below!
