Just after the protest decision, H Company won a competitive contract and got into immediate trouble because of having agreed to an unexecutable schedule. Terry Little is the Defense Department's most seasoned program manager and has pioneered many acquisition reform initiatives. While an old dog may be able to learn new tricks, past performance is still the best indicator of future performance. Integrity is fragile, and once shattered is slow to be repaired. Judgment is the ability to combine hard data, questionable data and intuitive guesses to arrive at a conclusion that events prove to be correct.
Successful leaders rely on both rational and intuitive approaches in making decisions.