Do you have a little voice? Do you listen to it? Do you talk to it? The best decision-makers do. Not only do they listen to it, they trust it. We live in a world where there is too much data. That can get in the way of relying on the patterns we have in our head. Let me explain a bit. Dr. Gary Klein, author of The Power of Intuition, says that there is actually data showing that when people ignore their intuition, the quality of their decisions goes down. You see, most decisions are made subconsciously before people even begin to perform the analysis . . .
Herbert Simon, who was awarded a Nobel prize for his research on decision-making introduced the concept of “bounded rationality, to explain why it is impossible to make any decision by gathering and analyzing all the facts. Because it is impossible to gather all the facts. There’s just too many of them and too many combinations of them.
So, what do you do if you can’t gather and analyze all the facts? Rely on the pattern matching in your brain. You see, over the years, your brain develops a large repertoire of experiences. The brain seeks out the patterns in these experiences. That’s why you can “feel” what you should do in a particular situation before you’ve even had a chance to fully consider the problem. This means that many times, the analysis you conduct before making a decision should be used to test the intuitive decision you have, rather than ignoring your intuition and beginning from scratch.
Remember, decisions don’t have answers. They have outcomes. If you are at peace with the decision you make, you will be much better prepared to respond, regardless of what happens as a result of your decision.
The next time you are making a significant decision, stop to listen to your intuition. Then gather the facts and compare them to what you feel you should be doing. If there is a significant conflict with one or more facts, work to reconcile that. You may change your decision based on these considerations. But this is a much better way to consider decisions than beginning with data analysis. One last thought . . make sure you have a clear vision of the desired outcome in your mind as you make the decision. As you begin to consider the problem and decision to be made, ask yourself, “What is my desired outcome?” The more specific the better. Chances are the outcome won’t be exactly what you’ve envisioned. But as the cartoon character, Pogo, used to say, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up someplace else.”