Intuition & Decision Making

The thing we call  INTUITION  or our gut-feeling is comparable to a well-programmed (when experienced) pattern recognition device!  I like this analogy which I was reading lately on the internet.

Intuition works with our gut because the brain is physically connected to this area of our body.  It gives us emotional reactions which the brian can´t release.  So when the brain triggers information the gut reacts to it.  And this takes place pretty often when we are obviously making decisions!

But what does the brain trigger or releases to our gut in form of a feeling?  Translated it is the status of our current decision situation, which quickly gets connected to similar patterns of our past on the subconscious level and there it creates links from our situation to those (stored) patterns. It´s simply spoken:  linking stored experience in form of a pattern to a new situation, which seems to be similarly structured.

But intuition is no safety net for decision makers!

Still we shouldn´t completely rely to our past!  We always have to do the homework and gather as many facts and information as we need, to get a clear picture of what we deal with today.  And this is how intuition gets to work:  it navigates us faster through all the unstructured data and will work around certain info gaps and conflicts in the available data!

Compare it to you walking around in a bog landscape:  you´ll walk around the bog like it´s info gaps on which you can´t step, plus it means conflict as well.  It is there to complete the landscape but it´s not fully available to walk straight through it.

If you look at it from this point of view you´ll understand that there´s a big picture with missing land, visible but unclear of its stability and therefore not useful.  If you spot yourself in such an area in nature you might understand how your intuition runs around in your subconsciousness, with the aim to help you to not fall over faulty info nor to sink in it!

Trusting your gut feeling only, will include that you offer yourself some faulty information and missing facts!  And we need as much information for a decision process as possible.  Plus, the past never determines the future!

Intuition is wise but not always right.  Intuition is important when we are confronted with the following decision scenarios:

• – there is no precedent you can rely to
• – the information of today you deal with is conflicting, incomplete and ambigious
• – the problem is poorly structured
• – the basic factors are changing fast and you have trouble analyzing in such a speedy scenario
• – you have to decide real quick, it´s a now or never situation with a beneficial outcome

Oh, and do you remember that you sometimes love to say: “it was intuition!” when things went well after deciding quickly?  But what do you say after something went wrong? …….

 

BE A DECISION MAKER.  BE OUTSTANDING.

rita jaskolla – Leadership Architect –