Intuitive intelligence for leaders

In a speech to the Economic Club of Washington in 2018, Jeff Bezos described the challenge his business faced in coming up with a loyalty scheme that would work for Amazon. It was a highly consequential decision which had been perplexing the executive team for some time. Then, out of the blue, a junior software engineer came up with the idea of fast, free shipping. But the stumbling block was that shipping is expensive and customers like free shipping, so much so that the big eaters at Amazon’s “buffet” would likely ship one dollar items at a two dollar shipping charge. This isn’t a good way to make money; when the Amazon finance team modelled fast, free shipping the results “didn’t look pretty”, in fact they were nothing short of “horrifying.”  But Bezos is experienced enough to know that some of his best decisions have been made with “guts... not analysis.” No one could put a probability on whether fast, free shipping would fly or flop. But Bezos decided to go with his gut. Prime was launched in 2005. It’s become one of the world’s most popular subscription services with over 100 million members who spend on average $1,400 per year compared to $600 for non-prime members.

As a seasoned executive and experienced entrepreneur Bezos sensed that the Prime idea could work. And in his speech he reminded his audience that “if you can make a decision with analysis, you should do so. But it turns out in life that your most important decisions are always made with instinct and intuition, taste, heart.” Whether or not to go with your gut isn’t an uncommon CEO predicament, and choosing to do so isn’t an uncommon response: many CEOs rely on the informed and intelligent use of intuition to take big decisions, in other words on their intuitive intelligence.

But what is ‘intuition’, what does it mean to ‘go with your gut’, and what does ‘intuitive intelligence’ look like?

Defined simply, intuition is ‘knowing without knowing how or why you know’. It often presents itself uninvited as a ‘sense’ about a person (for example, a potential hire) or situation (for example, a business venturing opportunity). It’s a product of an ‘intuitive mind’ which, sitting alongside and complementing the ‘analytical mind’, is an automatic and unconscious broad bandwidth processor which works by whole pattern recognition and ‘talks’ to us in the language of gut feelings, hunches and vibes.

Intuition itself manifests itself in two ways: the first is as the ‘automated expertise’ which for many experienced professionals helps to get us through the day without having to think through every decision. An analogy is driving: novice drivers have to think things through but with enough experience driving becomes automated (up to a point); the second way it manifests is as a ‘holistic hunch’. This is where a situation, for example what someone did (or didn’t) say, doesn’t ‘stack up’ or seems a bit ‘fishy’ and is an ‘avoid’ signal. We often have to resort to metaphors to explain it to someone else. But holistic hunch needn’t be negative: it can be a positive vibe that it’s hard to explain about a person or a situation and can be an ‘approach’ signal. Jeff Bezos’ decision to go with his gut in the Amazon Prime decision is an example of holistic hunch.

So much for intuition, what about intuitive intelligence?

One definition of intuitive intelligence is “The capacity to be aware of, understand, interpret and manage intuitions in yourself and in others and hence make better judgements and take more effective decisions.” Intuition isn’t a sixth sense, nor is it a special gift possessed by some remarkable people; it’s a developable skill. In Trust Your Gut, a forthcoming publication by Professor Eugene Sadler-Smith, readers are taken though a seven-step journey towards intuitive intelligence: 1 Build intuitive muscle power; 2 Get in touch with gut your feelings; 3 Know when, and when not, to trust it; 4 Think without thinking; 5 Tune-in and translate your hunches; 6 Debias your intuitive mind; and 7 Hone your hunches.  Trust Your Gut will be published by Pearson in the second half of 2024; it aims to help readers to use their intuition to take better decisions in their professional and personal lives.

Eugene Sadler-Smith is Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Surrey Business School, University of Surrey. His research interests are intuition in decision-making and hubris in leadership. He is the author of several books including Intuition in Business (Oxford University Press, 2023), The Hubris Hazard and How To Avoid It (Routledge, 2024), and Trust Your Gut (Pearson, 2024).