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2013-09-24 13:47:41
hotographer Mindy V issid woke up one winter morning in 2010 with a simple
idea: dogs running in the snow.
That s all I had, she recalled.
The Manhattan resident followed her gut and went across town to Central Park.
There, V issid found three dogs jumping around in a couple of inches of new
snow covering the famed park s Great Lawn. She plopped down in the field and
waited. That s when the dogs headed right for her. She snapped off a shot just
before they barrelled over her.
The picture she took that morning, of happy-looking pups charging through a
cloud of snow with the New York City skyline behind them, has become one of V
issid s calling cards, maybe her most recognisable shot. It s a photo she would
have missed if she had not trusted her gut.
The best intuition is pulled from a well of deep knowledge and expertise.
What I realised is that if I follow my heart, if I follow my feelings, I get
good photographs, V issid said. We try to control everything in our lives,
and sometimes you have to let go.
It wasn t long ago that decision-by-intuition would have been regarded as
little more than magical thinking or a try at luck. But research has changed
that and intuition has been embraced as a key component to business decision
making.
There is, however, an inherent danger to it, and blindly following your gut can
be worse than ignoring it altogether. For managers, that means learning how to
trust your own instincts and encouraging employees to do the same. But it also
means learning to recognise when careful planning trumps sudden inspiration.
Perhaps the thing that most changed the way businesses think about inspiration
was a 2008 study co-authored by Gerard Hodgkinson, professor at Leeds
University Business School in the United Kingdom. Hodgkinson found that
intuition can be beneficial in specific circumstances. First, it s best to rely
on a gut feeling when you need to make a quick decision. Second, and this is
the important part, trust your intuition only when you have extensive knowledge
on the subject. In other words, the best intuition is pulled from a well of
deep knowledge and expertise.
A lot of people think intuition is general purpose, but intuition is actually
domain specific, said Massimo Pigliucci, a philosophy professor at City
University of New York, and author of Answers for Aristotle: How Science and
Philosophy Can Lead Us to A More Meaningful Life. Intuition is the result of
your subconscious brain picking up on clues and hints and calculating the
situation for you, and that s based solely on experience.
Chess players often rely on instinct, their subconscious aware of their
opponent s likely next move based on past experiences, Pigliucci said. And most
of us use intuition to do basic tasks, like drive a car. After years behind the
wheel, most people give little thought to the mechanics of driving, relying on
intuition to know when to watch out for that car drifting over from the other
lane.
An incident a Formula One driver experienced along those lines was a key
example in the Leeds study. The driver instinctively knew to hit his brakes
hard heading into a blind turn. He could have taken the turn faster and
normally would have but something told him to slow down. By doing so, he
avoided running smack into a pileup around the bend. Watching video of the
event later, the driver realised he had taken clues from people in the crowd.
They were staring at the crash instead of at him. His subconscious took over
and guided him away from the crash.
Not foolproof
Of course, there s a danger associated with having such successes with
intuition, Pigliucci warned. Then you start thinking, I need to trust my
intuition more. After a long career on Wall Street, for instance, picking
stocks might come down to intuitive hunches, but that doesn t mean your inner
voice is also skilled at picking football scores or spouses or anything else,
really.
Building intuition into the management of people or a business can be tricky,
said Rebecca Heino, professor of management at Georgetown University s
McDonough School of Business. It s not exactly something you can schedule a
meeting to tap into.
What s more, it might not always be obvious when a business decision is based
upon intuition or a deep well of experience. Many of Richard Branson s
successes with Virgin Atlantic have come from snap decisions, for instance.
Branson is famous for letting his hunches take over strategy sessions and for
avoiding formal business plans.
I research new ideas very thoroughly, asking a lot of people about their
experiences and their thoughts, Branson wrote in 2010. But on many occasions
I have followed my intuition; you can't make decisions based on numbers and
reports alone.
But his decisions aren t blind. They come with decades of experience, Heino
said. Richard Branson has had lots of success in his field to prove his
hunches are good, she said. The track record for Branson s gut feelings could
probably build a better resume than most CEOs.
Steve Jobs is also famous for giving his intuition much of the credit for his
success. In his 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, Jobs told the
crowd to have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow
already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
This principle helped guide Jobs to iTunes and the iPod two projects that
were seen as monumental risks when first released in 2001. Jobs made a quick,
intuitive decision to green light them even as many doubters said it would sink
Apple into a bottomless hole of development costs.
While Jobs made those decisions rapidly, he was also fastidious about the
execution of his projects, Pigliucci said. He famously went through code line
by line to make sure his lowest-level employees were executing his plans
perfectly.
Western cultures began to embrace intuition only recently, Pigliucci said,
while research suggests Southeast Asian countries have long given credit to gut
feelings being a good guide to decision making. Eastern managers, for instance,
are more likely to rely on hunches and give them credit for successes
afterward.
After photographer V issid learned to rely on her gut feelings, she wanted to
teach others how to do it. Her class, the Art of Intuitive Photography, teaches
the photography basics, but her instruction is more about following hunches.
You can get a good photograph and it will be technically correct, she said.
But if you follow your heart, you can take photos that can be wonderful.