The Gut Feel: How intuition can lead you to success in business

Chapter One: Introduction

A booklet turned into a series on intuition in business, one of the keys to successful entrepreneurship.

Contents:

Chapter One: Introduction

Chapter Two: Intuition and finding opportunities

Chapter Three: Intuition and the big picture

Chapter Four: Intuition and the start up

Chapter Five: Intuition and Marketing

Chapter Six: Intuition and Sales

Chapter Seven: Intuition and Growth

Chapter Eight: Intuition and Keeping (or getting) out of trouble

Chapter Nine: Intuition and Success

Chapter One

This chapter shows the importance of intuition in our daily life and how it is used to make most of our life changing decisions. Various views about what intuition is; are shared with the reader. The myth that intuition comes from some divine source is debunked.  The concept of personal mastery is introduced where the right attitude, awareness, and sensitivity is needed to develop unbiased intuition. The chapter then looks at how businesses and organizations are really run. We see that organisational life is far from rational, our goals continually change, and decisions are made intuitively.

Introduction

Over the last three decades management gurus have been telling us how to be successful in business – have a bias for action, be close to the customer, get productivity through your people, develop a learning community, stick close to the knitting, be hands on, be lean,  or become a six sigma black belt, etc. We have gone from strategic planning, to people, to strategy, to quality, to entrepreneurial action, and landed in the blue ocean. The way we think is common to all these methods but until recently has received little attention.

It was back in the early 1970s that one management scientist Henry Mintzberg questioned the way we believed that managers thought, saying that most decisions made in the workplace are intuitive and based on little deliberation because of time constraints. The reality is that we run our businesses on intuition but ironically little is said about the subject, and there is yet little assistance or guides to help us sharpen, focus and improve our intuition.

Away from the university lecture theatres in a time before it was necessary to have a degree to be an executive (yes there was such a time), there were many self taught people who learned through experience in what many would call “the school of hard knocks.”  People did their jobs on intuition. Our rush to higher education tended to influence us to shun the idea of intuition in favour of “analysis” which we learnt, but actually had trouble implementing it at work. We still relied on intuition, but wouldn’t really admit it in fear we would realise that a great part of our education was irrelevant to the day to day demands of work.

I was lucky to work with a man who came up through the “school of hard knocks” and who taught me how to run a business and undertake marketing on “gut feel.” Years later I was also mentored by a Chinese scholar of ancient Chinese traditional thinking (yes Sun Tzu) and couldn’t believe how much common sense it all made. Sun Tzu acted on intuition based upon a whole lot of mental rules, which we call heuristics, relying on self awareness as his intelligence tool. It was amazing how similar the two schools of thought were in their ways of thinking.

So thinking about it, only your gut feel, or your intuition is what makes you decide and move on something. We don’t pluck daisies saying “she loves me, she loves me not”, we go by something deep in our stomach (metaphorically of course), that gives us the confidence, the courage, the motivation, and the energy to do it.

If you remember the 1967 film The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) after graduating from college is seduced by an older woman Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), and then falls in love with her daughter Elaine (played by Katherine Ross). After Benjamin tells Elaine about the torrid affair with her mother, Elaine runs away to Berkeley, refusing to speak to him. Benjamin decides that he must marry Elaine and follows her to Berkeley. The two eventually become close again. However Mr. Robinson (Murray Hamilton) arrives at Berkeley and tells Benjamin if he has anything to do with Elaine he will prosecute him to the full extent of the law. Mr. Robinson takes Elaine away to marry Carl, another student at Berkeley. When Benjamin finds out that Elaine is marrying Carl he rushes to the church in Pasadena and arrives just after they are married. Thinking he is too late Benjamin bangs on the glass window at the back of the church and shouts “Elaine.” Elaine turns around and sees Benjamin, hesitates for a second looking at her parents and new husband Carl and then shouts “Ben” and runs towards him. After a scuffle the pair run down the road and flag down a bus and travel onto their new life.  This is a perfect example of intuition over reason. All important life decisions are made through intuition.

This book will share with you some of my thoughts on intuition and show you how to harness intuition through some simple tools so that you can make the right decisions that steer you venture to success.

So what is Intuition?

First of all what does intuition do? Intuition gives us a gut feeling about something, a quick insight into issues and problems, an instinctive sense, an inner knowing, a hunch, or wisdom about something. In psychology, intuition is described as thoughts and feelings that come to our mind without much reflection. Intuition surfaces our beliefs about something which we cannot easily justify through reasoning. Some describe intuition as a function coming from a holistic right side of the brain, although recent research has shown that intuition may be much more than that. Jungian psychology aligned intuition as a part of our personality type. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) tabulates different personality types where intuitive people tend to make decisions upon their perceptions. More recently intuition has become an important aspect of the creativity and innovation movement as a method or ability to solve problems and make decisions. Cognitively, intuition is based upon little rules of the thumb that originate from our deep beliefs that guide our decision making, called heuristics.

The reliability of our intuition depends upon our knowledge stored in our memory and perceptions from the environment. Therefore the wider and deeper our knowledge, given that there are no distorting forces present, the better might be our intuition. Those people who use intuition as a means of decision making according to Jung would make good entrepreneurs, where people must make decisions under uncertainty and little fact to reason on. Intuition is a means of making decisions that can deal with little factual information and analysis.

Intuition is a blend of knowledge, some logical fact, some belief, experience, emotion, sub-conscious memory, and stimuli perceived in the environment. Intuition is restrictive to what we are good at and not a general trait. For example a mechanic will be able to very quickly diagnose what is wrong with a car by just listening to it, where he may not be able to pick up why a baby is crying in a daycare centre, which a daycare professional would be able to do intuitively.

Is Intuition from any Divine Source?

Some authors, speakers, and spiritualists claim that intuition is a divine power with transcendent qualities that spiritually guide you. Although it can be argued that intuition is higher order thinking, it is certainly not of any divine origin coming from some spiritual source outside our existing knowledge. To believe that intuition is from some power of a higher order is very risky as this logic may convince people to follow their intuition when it may actually be coming from a person’s ego, or false intuition. The power of intuition is not divine, but the power of wisdom that emerges from personal mastery is something that can set people apart from others.

What is Personal Mastery?

Personal mastery is a term the author and management guru Peter Senge borrowed from the Buddhist Dharma meaning that you are practicing the kaizen or continuous improvement of everything you do in all areas of your life. Personal mastery is about a journey in life that brings among other things personal growth, learning, and wisdom. At this level you are able to see things for what they are unchecked by your emotional baggage and biases. In such a state intuition is completely unbiased and trustworthy and can assist you in your journey from your current reality to your personal visions in life. As such personal mastery also generates the energy you need to pursue your vision.

According to Peter Senge, people with personal mastery have;

·       A special purpose or calling in life,

·       Can see their currently reality very clearly,

·       Can recognize their own biases,

·       See change as an opportunity, and

·       Are deeply inquisitive.

These qualities show that three elements are important in gaining unbiased intuition, the right attitude of openness to what might really be, an unbiased awareness, and greater sensitivity.  

Attitude is very important to learning and our personal growth. This influences how we develop our mental models (i.e., built in assumptions about how the world around us works), which creates our meaning. This means not taking things for granted and wanting to see things in different perspectives, which will be discussed later. Sounds easy, but in reality we are usually locked in and become a slave to our attitudes. Think about it, we are naturally creatures of habit and like to maintain rigid routines that act as a protective screen against change. We naturally resist change as it brings uncertainty and uncertainty brings anxiety, which we try to avoid.

Attitude affects our sense of awareness. Some people are orientated towards the future and others to the past. When we become orientated to the future we can develop apprehensions and worry about what will happen bringing a sense of anxiety, thus becoming fearful about change. If we dwell on the past we can become remorseful and set in the patterns and ways of doing things, thus becoming rigid and fear change (an entrepreneur is someone who embraces change, orientated in the past will prevent any action orientation of a person). Being orientated in the future or past makes us rather insensitive to here and now, where we are at present. This is not to say that some future orientation is good to have visions about what could be, and at the same time to have some orientation on the past so we can learn in the present and find opportunities that improve the future.

Likewise our awareness is also affected by our locus of control (the belief about how much we have control over events around us). If we believe that we have no control over events going on around us, we won’t care and we will be oblivious to opportunities around us. If we believe that we can control everything, then we may become delusional about what we can achieve and develop an extreme sense of over confidence.

This quad-directional frame is surrounded by our emotions which can distort our awareness. Emotions such as envy, greed, lust, anger, depression, and persecution distract us from seeing the environment clearly and affect our interpretation of what exists. In mild forms a little bit of ruthlessness might be necessary to survive out there in the world, but too much greed for example may influence a person to undertake strategies that are too ambitious, and put a company into cash-flow problems.

Being balanced within the awareness plain is very important to having an unbiased intuition (shown in figure 1.1.).

Figure 1.1. The Awareness Plain.

We also need to have emotional sensitivity so we can pick up what is happening around us. Emotional sensitivity runs across a continuum from mindlessness to mindfulness. Mindlessness numbs individuals’ senses to the outside environment and patterns them into seeing situations as absolutes. Whereas mindfulness is a state of psychological freedom without any attachment to any point of view and being attentive to what is occurring at present. Many peoples’ emotional sensitivity is inhibited by their past categorizations, rules and routines that cloud the ability to view any current situation with novel distinction. Therefore the more mindful a person is, the more open to the environment they will be.

Figure 1.2. Our emotional sensitivity.

How Business is Really Run

One of the great myths of the 20th Century was that firms and organizations were run rationally. Anybody who has seen some of the British “Carry on” series, “Monty Python”, or “Yes Minister” and worked in any large organization will laugh at the idea that organizations are anything resembling rational. Organizational life is probably something more akin to the episodes of “Absolutely Fabulous.” Although we believe we are rational beings, we actually go about things in the most inconsistent ways. We probably still have a lot to learn from the ant species that we share the Earth with.

This is especially the case in entrepreneurs and new venture formation (or new marriages for that matter). We try things in an exploratory way to see how they work. If they work, we keep doing it, and that becomes our behavior. Those parents reading will know that this is how children learn. So the journey of business and life is more akin to sailing a yacht along a bay against the wind tacking every few hundred metres to reach some upwind point, at some optimum angle against the wind. Although we may set certain goals at the beginning of the journey, most probably during that journey we modify them and end up at a new destination as well. Firm rules don’t work, it’s more about seeing and feeling what happens and making decisions accordingly. The journey of life is therefore guided by intuition, and the better we understand it, the better it can work for us.

Figure 1.3. The journey of life is like sailing a yacht upwind.

The rest of this book will show you how to use intuition when all the facts are not available to find opportunities, start-up and grow a business.

The next chapter will look at how intuition helps us find opportunities. You will see how not too many people look into the future and outside their own set geographical areas. Most people see opportunity through their own aspirations and often mistake their personal interests for opportunity. Different types of opportunities have different types of characteristics and intuition helps us to construct them into new business models. Finally we will see that curiosity and interest are two very important ingredients in the ability to see opportunities.

Chapter three is about seeing the big picture of opportunities which can be intuitively tested through checklists which help us to examine each element of the selected opportunity. As you will see most entrepreneurs never start with any formal business plan, and even if they did, they would undertake this intuitive due diligence.

Chapter four is about intuition and the start-up phase of a venture. Entrepreneurs are usually strapped for resources and only have time to do what is immediately important to get the start-up going. They have little information to go on, so they must use intuition to make the necessary and important decisions. You will also see in this chapter that one must be very careful not to mistake ego for their intuition which is a deadly trap for young players.

Chapter five concerns intuition and marketing. Entrepreneurial marketing is very different from conventional marketing practices due to the lean resources an entrepreneur has. Start-up ventures usually lack market information and must therefore rely on intuition to make decisions. We will also see that what entrepreneurs envision for the market and what consumers will accept may be very different and entrepreneurs must reconcile these differences. Intuition on the run in the marketplace helps to reconcile entrepreneurial visions with consumer realities. The chapter concludes with an outline of how a new firm can find its place in the market by either attracting consumers away from existing products or creating new value to consumers.

Chapter six is about intuition and the sales process. Sales are vital in the start-up phase of an enterprise and most of the entrepreneur’s time will be concerned with this issue. The chapter outlines the basic principles of sales, how to build up sales skills, and how to put up your case to the potential customer. Empathy, a form of intuition is very important in the initial sales process and for meeting later objections that potential customers may raise.

Chapter seven concerns intuition and growth. During the life of a firm there will be times when big decisions may have to be made that alter the destiny of the enterprise. These potential paths can be looked upon as potential moves that can be made in the game of chess, where any move will have specific consequences.

Chapter eight is concerned with intuition and keeping (or getting) out of trouble. There are usually a number of crises during the life of a firm where getting out of trouble is about intuition as much it is about following management philosophy. There are multiple perspectives about any situation that need to be appreciated before decisions should be made. Different perspectives can be discovered and appreciated by the use of lists. This helps to support intuition. Another problem with any crisis is the stress it brings the entrepreneur, which potentially blocks unbiased intuition.

Finally, chapter nine summarizes the issues involved with intuition and business. The blocks to and distortion of intuition are revisited as well as the relationship between intuition, creativity, and action.  

Summary

·       In reality business decision making is done intuitively.

·       Our life changing decisions are also made intuitively.

·       Intuition can be defined as thoughts and feelings that come to our mind without any reflection.

·       Intuition is an important part of creativity.

·       Intuition is the only way to make decisions where factual information doesn’t exist.

·       Intuition is based upon our current knowledge, experience, beliefs, and from what we see in the environment and has no divine sources.

·       Personal mastery is a continual journey to self improvement, through learning, personal growth, and the source of our wisdom.

·       Attitude, awareness, and sensitivity are very important to get insightful and unbiased intuition.

·       It is important that we live in the present and not the past or the future.

·       We must be realistic about our sense of control over events within the environment.

·       We must be aware of emotions that can burden us with bias.

·       Business and organizations are far from rational entities.

·       Organizations rarely pursue their goals directly, as strategy and action is more about trial and error, and the resulting learning.

Some More Introductory Tips:

·       Thought Audit: Most people are not aware of what is contained within their thoughts and what emotions influence them. We can discover the influences on our thoughts by recording them down in a dairy. For example you have a thought about “being the person to kick the winning goal in Saturday’s football match,” After your write down the thought try and think what emotion and motivation is behind it. Back in this example the thought of kicking the winning goal might be associated with “the need to achieve” or “the need to seek attention and be noticed” – this could come from feeling inferior to others, or just a need to be competitive. After a day or so of recording down your thoughts and emotions, one may begin to see consistent patterns about the types of emotions you feel and if any particular set of emotions dominate your thinking. You may find that your emotions have multiple motivations. In the above example your thoughts may show you that there is both a need to achieve and a need to be competitive. There may even be some feeling of a need to make a difference. On the contrary, your thoughts may show that you have a strong desire to be noticed. Being forced to think about the types of emotions you feel may give you some insights into yourself that surprise you and help you to build up unbiased intuition.

Next: Chapter Two: Intuition and finding opportunities

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