The Judgment Gap: Why Leaders Must Slow Down to Go Faster — with Matt Taylor

Own the Call: Matt Taylor on Closing the Judgment Gap in the Age of AI

In this post: Endpoint Clinical Head of HR Matt Taylor explains why AI will not fix weak people decisions, only scale them. He shares how leaders can fix processes before automating, avoid the illusion of rigor, and stay accountable for every decision a model informs.

Eight minutes before a team meeting, Matt Taylor opened an AI tool and built a slide deck from nothing. He then spent about 20 minutes walking his team through why AI matters, how to govern it, and what never to feed it, such as employee or client data.

Then came the reveal. "I created this presentation in eight minutes before this call," Taylor told them. It struck a chord.

Taylor, Head of HR at Endpoint Clinical, a life sciences organization, is no AI skeptic. "Those who use AI will replace those who don't," he said on Activating Greatness, the leadership podcast from Velocity Advisory Group. Yet his sharpest warning runs the other way. Speed is now cheap. Judgment is not, and AI will not fix weak people decisions. It will only scale them.

Slow Down to Go Faster

Taylor began his career in recruiting long before email and job boards, and he has watched several waves of technology promise to change work. His rule for this one is to pause first.

"I think slowing down to go faster is really important," he said. AI amplifies whatever is already in place. Without clear processes, consistent decision making, and a shared picture of what great looks like, he said, "all you're going to do is automate bad behavior, bad decision making, and poor quality, lock, stock and barrel at lightning speed."

He tied the often-cited claim that 95% of AI projects fail to a skipped step. Teams rush past the hard conversations that define success in clear, measurable terms. The work does not go away, he said. It moves to the front end, and that investment pays off quickly.

The Illusion of Rigor

Clean dashboards create a dangerous confidence. They look precise, Taylor said, but leaders still need to understand the levers that move the numbers underneath.

Hiring offers his clearest example. A company adopts AI to screen résumés and rank candidates based on historical data. On paper, it looks great. But if past hiring succeeded about 50% of the time and produced maybe 10% high performers, the tool inherits those odds, along with any old preferences for certain schools and backgrounds.

"All you've done is replicate a pattern in a new tool that now looks scientific, but it's really just automated what you used to do, which doesn't move the numbers," he said. The discipline, in his view, is "asking better questions about the assumptions behind those." Leaders have to stay close to the reasoning, because automation can strengthen judgment, he said, but "it doesn't replace it."

He also rejects the set-it-and-forget-it mindset. His alternative is a "wash, rinse, repeat" cycle of monitoring results and refining the tool every quarter or twice a year.

Leaders Cannot Hide Behind the Model

For Taylor, the biggest risk sits where AI and leadership intersect: leaders hiding behind technology. His organization recently implemented a third-party AI tool in its talent acquisition platform in India, and he is watching for a familiar temptation. "It's easy to say the model recommends this candidate," he said. "What I want to safeguard against is leadership outsourcing decisions or problems. It's about owning them."

Leaders must be able to explain why a decision was made and what factors were considered. "Technology should support the thinking that we're all going to be held accountable for," he said. He worries about leaders "deferring too much authority to the algorithms" and losing human judgment, trust, and accountability along the way.

"What I want to safeguard against is leadership outsourcing decisions or problems. It's about owning them."

Matt Taylor, Head of HR, Endpoint Clinical

HR has a role here. Taylor sees the function as an advisor that defines what great looks like and points out the risks. "We shine lights on the dark shadow areas that they don't want to touch," he said. Christine Miller made a related case for keeping humanity at work in the era of AI.

A Gap That Opens Later

Host Alec McChesney raised a quieter cost. Junior roles once gave people real decisions with real stakes. As AI absorbs that work, where do future leaders practice?

Taylor shares the concern. Early-career years are when people learn the business, "make mistakes, learn from them, pivot." Companies still bring in plenty of interns, he observed, but he sees fewer openings for people with one to seven years of experience. Turnover at the VP level is already high, he added, which leaves a gap on both sides.

He wants tools that find what he calls "great humans," not just technical skills, and then development plans that "care and feed and nurture them" into the next generation of leaders. He has not seen that technology yet.

The urgency matches the stakes. McChesney recalled a CEO who wants his leadership team "appropriately annoyed," a theme Jon Stenberg explored in his conversation on accountability. Taylor's version is blunter: comfort is not the goal.

Rapid-Fire Leadership Lessons

• Daily habit: Clarity, making sure people know what success looks like and where the team is going. "Most problems that I see disappear when expectations are clear."
• Most underrated skill: Radical candor. Name the elephant in the room and give honest feedback early. Most organizational problems, he said, "come from avoiding conversations and decisions that should have happened months earlier."
• Stop doing: Trying to placate everyone. Leaders make decisions that create short-term discomfort and build a stronger organization over time. "Keeping everybody comfortable and happy and smiling isn't really your job."
• Best advice: Operate with integrity, and be fair, consistent, and clear. People can handle tough decisions when they believe the process was fair and applies to everyone.

The Takeaway: Dust Off the Process Map

Taylor's closing advice was to get back to basics before buying anything. Stop, pull out the business process map, and check whether it still reflects how the business works. "Dust it off. When's the last time you looked at it?" he asked. "Strip out any of the nonsense, get at the bare bones, and then do it again." Then start small, pressure test, and review on a regular cadence.

The tool, he said, "is only going to be as good as it is refreshed." The same holds for the leaders using it. AI can make a team faster, but only people can make the call and answer for it. Leaders who fix the process, ask the hard questions, and own the outcome will close the judgment gap.

Listen to the Full Episode

Hear Matt Taylor's full conversation with host Alec McChesney on Activating Greatness. Watch on YouTube, or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Follow Matt on LinkedIn.