The Intuitive Manager

The role and value of intuition in business although difficult to understand and manage.

At times, I've struggled to articulate exactly why I made certain business decisions. The insights came with a strong sense of conviction and were proven to be right but not necessarily with a clearly defined logical sequence of supporting facts. If the stakes are high, the executive team expects some justification for resource commitments. Successful track record non-withstanding, blind faith does not hold up well in the boardroom.

This used to bother me until I came across an article in the Financial Times on a flight to London. "The Intuitive Manager" was written from the perspective of a reporting manager who could only trust in vain as his top contributor consistently came up with the right answer and just as consistently was unable to explain "why". A possible explanation was based on the observation that only 12% of all adults are considered "strongly intuitive" and able to put this trait to good use. There is no link to the original article so I've included it below.
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One possible explanation for the "intuitive" brain is to see it as a function of different internal wiring with the ability to make connections in novel ways. What appears to be a leap of faith is some kind of wormhole in the space time continuum of subconscious data processing that goes on in your head when tackling a particularly difficult challenge. There are many anecdotes on the brains ability to do problem solving at the subconscious level with the gratifying result of a sudden insight on awakening after a good nights sleep or engaged in some seemingly unrelated activity. The process is there, but not easily articulated in a series of steps. And that's often the nature of a brilliant insight.

As a process, it can be somewhat disconcerting without the specific detail for a seemingly critical function. It will look like a random occurrence if it cannot be commanded on demand. However, there is real value in harnessing this ability when faced with difficult challenges. As you take on an innovative challenge, you can help your team by considering the potential benefit of a highly intuitive contributor and making sure it is included somewhere in your tool set.

The full article, from "John W. Hunt Advises", The Financial Times, Wed, August 26, 1998

Intuition is more than just a hunch.

Instinctive decision-making is in fashion and the search for intuitive managers is on.

Dear Professor Hunt. I am intrigued by one of my managers, whose short time at the company to date has been peppered with impressive feats of instinctive problem solving. Her CV punctuates the lie that it is merely beginners luck, but I am intrigued when she tells me she “just knows” the likely outcome of her actions. In my experience such intuitive clarity of thought is rare, not to mention unorthodox. How does she do it?
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Prof. Hunt replies:
For a long time people running businesses have been intrigued by the role of intuition - hunches about how things will occur or how information is related,

However, only recently has intuition come under rigorous scientific scrutiny. As an article in the psychologist journal (“Knowing Without Knowing Why", May 1998) put it: "Intuition has been an uncomfortable, and therefore, for most of this century, a neglected notion in psychology."

Well, things are changing. After decades of being warned about the uncertainty of hunches, chief executives are now being encouraged by management gurus to play their hunches. Personality tests, claiming to assess intuition, are common.

This change has been driven on two obvious fronts. First, there is growing awareness that there are some individuals in the business world who are better able to foresee events, to select options, to devise strategy, to select winners. And, while academic researchers have avoided ways of understanding the role played in this by intuition, others - such as human resources specialists and consultants working with chief executives are noticeably less coy.

Second, the creators of one commonly-used personality questionnaire, Myers Briggs, claim that only 12 per cent of adults in any society are strongly intuitive. In an age where devising solutions to complex problems is a huge service industry, it is not surprising to see much of the current management training aimed at identifying those who are more intuitive than the rest.

Identifying solutions to business problems rarely follows the rational processes so admired by planners and researchers. Often these solutions appear as bolts from the blue or at the end of a hazy and meandering cognitive process. There are similarities here with the intuitive way that children learn. For example, Rubik's Cube was far less of a challenge to most children than it was to adults. Similarly, most children cope with modern technology far better than their often bewildered parents. The author of the Psychologist article, Guy Claxton, argues that children use an implicit learning approach in which they simply play with the puzzle (or the personal computer) and pick up, without thinking, the patterns that emerge. Adults try to figure out how things work, to find logical, sequential explanations. The child's unconscious trial-and-error learning appears to have parallels with the thought processes of an intuitive manager.

Ironically, research has shown that intuitive learning is at its most effective when the patterns are complex - for example, multiple sources of information, few apparent rational links and counter-intuitive. Those with intuitive ability are tolerant of this confusion and do not try to force data into a rational explanation. Instead, they try to visualize the whole to reduce its complexity. Frequently, they create two-dimensional pictures to explain their insights to others. In short, they create their own Rubik's Cubes.

The articulation of this insight is often a tortured process. Lunch can become a series of chess-like moves as they co-opt the salt and pepper, knives and forks, to communicate their perception of events. Such modeling arises from a need to give substance and form to a fleeting hunch; to make sense of a bolt from the blue.

Many intuitive managers, of course, fail to explain their insights to others. If forced, they fall back on rational explanations, yet to the listener it is clear that this post hoc rationalization provides very little evidence of the journey to understanding that took place.

In all this, however, it is as well to remember that intuition is a fallible guide to action. Claxton argues that it is no less so than logic, but then we have all met the highly intuitive executive whose reputation is that one in 10 of their ideas comes off. It is not surprising that most of us return to more conventional thought processes .which time has shown to be comforting, if not always effective. And it goes without saying that rational explanations are much easier to sell.

But what of the environment in which intuition is perceived to flourish? Contrary to popular myth, stress is not conducive to intuitive activity. Low personal stress levels and a relaxed approach to the problem in question appear to be beneficial. Konrad Lorenze, a Nobel Laureate for medicine in 1973, is quoted by Claxton as saying: "If you press too hard nothing comes of it. You must give a sort of mysterious pressure and then rest and suddenly Bing!... the solution comes."

Claxton concludes his summary of theories with a quote from the Book of Ecclesiasticus: "The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure and he that hath little business shall become wise." In an age of obsessively measuring what it is that each of us contributes, one wonders what this observation might mean for the role of intuition and one of its key outcomes -creativity- in organisations.