Human Intelligence · Intentional Leadership
The Sign-Off℠
Three questions. Better decisions. Stronger leadership.
Thirty seconds before you commit. Run it on a tough call, a strategic plan, a hard conversation you have been avoiding, and especially on the answers AI hands you. Build your discernment & judgment. The skills that matter most are the ones the machines cannot learn.
The Tool
Ask these three before you commit.
Judgment is a skill you can learn. Most bad calls are not made by careless people. They are made by capable people moving fast, making assumptions, and forgetting quality checks. The Sign-Off℠ slows you down for thirty seconds and offers simple checks and tradeoffs to consider every time.
Blind Spots
What am I not seeing? What was assumed or missed?
Discernment is what you notice. Pause and notice the circumstances, the inputs, the energy that surround this decision.
- What info isn't available?
- What did you assume?
- Who might offer an alternate POV?
Catches the assumption
Stakes
What or who is at risk, and how reversible is it?
Give real consideration to the consequences of this decision. If it's low impact then don't spend much more time. Make a judgment call and move forward.
But if this impacts colleagues, clients, investments, trust, and the like, make the time to check your data, get additional POVs, run a pilot. Slow down to make sure you stress-test the decision.
Considers the impact
Signature
Would I put my name on it? Will I risk my reputation?
If you would not want to hear your name attached to this decision, go back and do some more work on it. Judgment is making the call. Sound judgment is making the call after having applied discernment, ensured data and quality are checked, examined the impacts, and knowing you can stand by the decision. This is where you own it.
Protects your reputation
When to Run It
When you're unsure. When you're TOO sure.
Use it with people and with technology. Use it on the calls where being wrong is expensive, where your reputation or relationships are at stake, and on all the AI that you sign your name to.
Mini but Mighty℠ Leadership Lessons
Discernment & Judgment: the four-part series.
Discernment is what you notice. Judgment is what you do about it. The gap between the two is where most leaders go wrong, and it is the gap that gets wider the more you lean on tools to think for you. The Sign-Off℠ lives inside this series.
Free Download
Keep The Sign-Off℠ close at hand.
One page. Print it, pin it, drop it in your notebook, or hand it to every manager on your team before their next big call.
- The three questions, laid out to run in thirty seconds
- Prompts for each question so you are not staring at a blank page
- Print-ready, black and white friendly, one sheet
Downloaded
You have the card. Now build the skill behind it.
The Sign-Off℠ came out of a four-part series on discernment and judgment. Every Friday there is a new Mini but Mighty℠ Leadership Lesson, short enough to watch before your next meeting and practical enough to use in it.
Subscribe to Mini but Mighty℠One person using this changes one decision. One hundred managers using it changes how a company performs.
When you are ready to cultivate intentional leaders at scale, we run workshops, courses, and cohort programs built for exactly that.
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