Intuitive Decision Making in Leadership and Management
What is Decision Making?
A fork in the road, options, and choices
all afford us the opportunity to make decisions. Making decisions, and more importantly,
making effective decisions is a staple in leadership. It is difficult to be a leader or manager and
continue to make bad decisions. It is
also true that it is hard to continually make good decisions and not be looked
at as a leader. “Decision making is the process
of identifying and choosing alternative courses of action.” “A decision is a choice
made from among available alternatives.” (Kinicki et al, 2020)
A System of Decision Making
Nobel Prize in economics winner of 2020, Daniel
Kahneman authored Thinking, Fast and Slow. In his book he summarized systems of decision
making. We will be focusing on his first
system of decision making, known as the “intuitive and largely unconscious” system. I recommend his book for a read if you are
interested in researching this further and have included the link immediately
below.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman 7th (seventh) Impression edition by Kahneman, Daniel(Author) published by Doubleday Canada (2011) [Hardc
Leaders and Managers Making
Decisions
There exists a rational model for decision
making, that boasts completely acquiring information, removing emotion from the
equation, and coming to the most optimal decision for the organization. While this is ideal in a perfect world, we often
find that this is unrealistic. We run
into problems such as the inability to accurately collect all the information,
as well as completely removing our emotions from the situation. There are many problems and issues here that
can hold us back. Time, money, and
values are just three. Due to this, we
look at the way managers make decisions in the real world.
When
making decisions in the real world, in a real organization, managers and
leaders turn to a system of non-rational decision making. While referring to it as non-rational, it may
have a negative net effect on us consciously, but all this means is that we are
not compiling and analyzing all the information to make the most optimal
decision. We should strive to do this,
however, as managers and leaders with deadlines, schedules, and other
requirements, it is difficult to do so.
The Satisficing Model
Herbert Simon, a 1950s economist who
received the Nobel Prize described the satisficing model as “managers seeking
alternatives until they find one that is satisfactory, not optimal.” (Kinicki et al, 2020) If we study this, we
understand that sometimes there is efficiency in coming to a decision that satisfies
the current situation, however, may not be the optimal decision at the time. There is a level of sacrifice here in that we
are not making the most effective decision, but we are making one effective
enough. The trade off is that we are
able to then distribute the saved time, money, and other resources to focus on
other decisions and tasks that need to be addressed as well. There may be times that we are able to come
closer to making an optimal decision depending on the circumstances, however,
there is a large varying degree of middle ground depending on the situation.
While a lot of organizations and leaders
want to believe a real pie in the sky idea that good leaders and managers
always make the best, most optimal decisions that they can for their
organizations, the truth is that this isn’t always the case. This is also the case with life in
general. We are often pulled in many
different directions, and that results in us not being able to completely
analyze all situations and requires us to be able to make a decision that
satisfies the current situational goals and necessary outcomes while affording
us more time to tackle other problems.
Even in parenting, it is common to shortchange adding up all the
nutritional value of baby foods to ensure that the child is getting one hundred
percent daily value of all nutrients in lieu of scheduling a visit with the
doctor to address a persistent fever. We
are not making a complete sacrifice; however, we are making a determination of
what is satisfactory and then moving on.
Sometimes we shortchange the decision-making
process too much. Situations where we do
not give ourselves proper time to analyze even for a satisficing type decision
can be referred to as snap situations, where snap decisions are made. Often, we find ourselves in situations where a
quick decision is required and there is no getting around making one. We cannot allow ourselves to be beat up by these
situations, and as I always say, “You win some, you lose some.” Many times, you will find that a poor
decision is better than indecision, especially in leadership. I would suggest that you try to foresee these
decisions so that quick draw decisions are kept to a minimum, as forced quick
decisions carry the most risk.
Intuition, the Intuitive Model
Intuition is known as “going with your gut”,
or “Making a choice without the use of conscious thought or logical inference.”
(Kinicki et al, 2020) This is a shoot from the hip approach that can be honed
to accuracy. I would describe intuition
as the awareness of unconscious self-talk.
Pure intuition carries no knowledge, experience, or expertise in the
area where the decision is made and is said to be extremely risky. In leadership and management, however, we
want to be well informed on the topics that we are making intuitive decisions
on. Our experience and expertise in our
areas paired with an intuitive approach allows us to make a decision known as a
holistic hunch.
When afforded the opportunity to make a
decision that relies on intuition, we should always allow our knowledge in the
general area of the decision to play a role in that decision. This keeps us from shooting in the blind as
well as allows us to develop our intuition and increase our chances of using
intuition and reaching a close-to-optimum decision. This takes practice and courage. Let’s face it, to make a decision in an important
or high-pressure setting based on a gut feeling is very bold. If we continually refrain from using this
approach and always take say, a rational approach, our team will quickly notice
this lack of intuition and at least subconsciously think it as a mark against
our leadership.
1. Recognizing Your Intuition
The first step at developing our intuitive
senses is to be able to accurately identify situations where they should be
applied. We shouldn’t force this search,
rather, we should strive to stay mindful in all situations and search our own
feelings. We must be able to recognize
when we feel a certain way about something in terms of an innate
right-or-wrong. This is achieved by first
finding what just feels wrong. Everyone
has been placed in a situation where everything feels wrong, and your guts are
screaming at you to turn and run the other direction. It is in this place that exists in our mind,
but referred to as our guts, that is the platform for intuitive thinking. Once we recognize applicable situations, we must
learn to listen to ourselves, and not only in those situations that tell us to
run away. The most difficult part of
developing intuition is knowing when we should strive for something or go for
it. The gut feeling to pursue is usually
a much duller sensation than that of the feeling to flee.
2. Using Your Intuition
Once we can mindfully be aware of when we
are communicating with ourselves subconsciously, we are able to use this self-communication
to make decisions. This is powerful
because it removes having to use our conscious mental resources to make
decisions that are optimum. This when
developed allows us to make optimum decisions with little effort. A fallacy here is that undeveloped
application of intuition is akin to shooting in the dark, and we should seek to
develop our intuitive abilities in order to make the best use out of them and take
our leadership and management skills to the next level.
After the initial recognition of intuitive
thought, we must extract what we have told ourselves subconsciously. This is achieved by assessing our feelings
about the situation. With practice it
becomes clear, but at first it may just be a feeling that we have to identify
through trial and error. At first it may
seem that your intuitive thought is clouded with emotions and other subconscious
clutter and that trusting these thoughts will result in very muddy decisions
that don’t help much of anyone, much less the organization.
I recommend at first, we use lower profile
situations in order to develop our intuition to a satisficing level before applying
it to more important decisions within your life and organization. This is one of those skills of development
that just by acknowledging it gives you a boost in ability to practice it.
3. The Feedback Loop: Did My Intuition Serve Me Well?
The third step in developing and using your
intuition is to then engage in a feedback loop.
This is probably the most important step because this is the step that
facilitates development and growth. We
need to recognize that we encountered a situation where our subconscious minds
engaged in self-talk that led us to make a decision. We need to follow this up with how that decision
performed for us in order to determine the accuracy of the intuitive gut-feeling.
This is important, because if we are making
poor decisions based on intuition, we may not be making them on true intuition
and instead making them based on other feelings or emotions. It is as important to recognize that we are
making intuitive decisions as much as it is that we do make intuitive
decisions, and even more so, because what is the point in constantly shooting
in the dark?
The Take Away
Intuition is a very useful tool to help us
as leaders and managers make decisions.
Intuition is subconscious communication within us that analyze problems
and produce decisions immediately and without our knowledge. These decisions and analyses present
themselves in the form of “gut-feelings” that persuade us to consciously act or
decide. We can learn to trust our subconscious
analytical self and its products as decisions after understanding what they are
by remaining mindful of three things; recognizing intuitive situations, actively
using your intuition to come to conscious decisions, and then analyzing the
results to determine whether your subconscious mind came to a satisfactory
conclusion in the form of a decision.
This provides the foundation of developing a powerful skill in
leadership.
References
Kinicki, Angelo, Williams, Brian K. (2020) Management:
a practical introduction, 245- 247
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