Intuitive Leap

This morning's email brought me an article from McKinsey, Strategic Decision: When to Trust Your Gut. This interview of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and psychologist Gary Klein is a reprise of their September 2009 American Psychology article titled “Conditions for intuitive expertise: A failure to disagree”. What they agree about is that intuition cannot be used in isolation; it must be supported by investigation and facts.

In management, intuition is needed on many occasions, most of them more mundane than the formulation of strategy. Improving our intuitive decisions can be achieved.

• Keep up on industry changes. Our knowledge-base must be current and rich. If it is not, leave aside intuition in favour of waiting for more information. Critical to using intuition successfully is a thorough understanding of our business specialty.
• Rely on real trust in colleagues who have shown they trust us and who are trusted by us. When working with new people, explore more options and involve more people before making decisions.
• Practice in low risk situations. Exercising intuition is similar to brain exercise. If we never try intuitive leaps, our brains will not be able to link seemingly disparate signals to devise effective solutions to problems.
• Avoid high risk decisions. When the stakes are high, intuition should be used for generating ideas that can be researched and refined later. Recognize that we can leap to wrong conclusions.
• Limit intuitive decisions in emergencies. Fire departments recommend fire drills because they know that actions based on prior planning will usually yield better results. In emergencies we may not have access to good information, and we usually want easy solutions.