Intuition And Our Biggest Decisions
Photo by Kristaps Grundsteins on Unsplash
I like to think I’m a pretty rational guy. That I consider the pros and cons when making decisions. It’s been drilled into me - through college, business school and then consulting - specifically, the need to be balanced, thoughtful and to consider all aspects before deciding on a path. Nothing controversial or unique about that. I’m sure we all think and behave the same way.
But that rationality belies a reality of making decisions that all of us also grapple with: the role of intuition.
There are many times when the facts tell us one thing - the rational thing - but something within us tells us something else. Situations when any logical analysis would suggest we stay put, not take a particular path or make a specific choice. And yet, we simply can’t turn ourselves away from the other path. It feels like the right thing - the only thing - to do.
Tim Cook faced exactly that when deciding to join Apple back in the late 90’s. Back then, for those of us old enough to remember, Apple was nothing like the organization it is today. It was, by most accounts, past its glory days, a company that had lost its battle for dominance and would likely become another footnote in American corporate history. Steve Jobs was in the early days of rebuilding the company and there were none of the breakthrough products we associate with them today.
But Jobs had a vision and a belief in where the company was going, and that’s what he sold to Cook, who at the time worked for Compaq, a behemoth in the computer industry. Every sane, rational measure suggested (demanded) that he stay where he was. I mean, why would you go to a company on its last legs, where the chances of success were so incredibly remote?
To quote Cook from his 2010 commencement speech at Auburn University:
“...there are times in our lives when the careful consideration of cost and benefits just doesn’t seem like the right way to make a decision. There are times in all of our lives when a reliance on gut or intuition just seems more appropriate–when a particular course of action just feels right. And interestingly I’ve discovered it’s in facing life’s most important decisions that intuition seems the most indispensable to getting it right.
Intuition is something that occurs in the moment, and if you are open to it...On that day in early 1998 I listened to my intuition, not the left side of my brain or for that matter even the people who knew me best. It’s hard to know why I listened, I’m not even sure I know today, but no more than five minutes into my initial interview with Steve, I wanted to throw caution and logic to the wind and join Apple. My intuition already knew that joining Apple was a once in a lifetime opportunity to work for the creative genius, and to be on the executive team that could resurrect a great American company.”
Which is, of course, exactly what he did, and together, they (along with many others) did indeed rebuild a great American company, one that is among the most valuable in the world today.
Intuition is what led him to make that decision, not the facts on the ground. I don’t know if there’s a way to unpack that, but I think we’d all agree that it’s real. We experience the very same thing in our own decisions, especially the big ones. We do the math, so to speak, but deep within ourselves, we know what we want, what we should do.
It seems irrational, and those around us don’t hesitate to tell us otherwise. Heck, we even tell ourselves the same thing. And yet…
At the end of the day, our big decisions certainly require deep thought and consideration, but there’s a processing that our intuition provides that cannot and should not be ignored. I don’t know if intuition is the bridge between out subconscious and our conscious. If it is the heart making interpretations and connection that our brain couldn’t possibly make.
But it exists and it speaks to us. It tells us what we need to know. It tells us what it is we need to do.
The point is, we need to learn to trust it, and ourselves.
