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WHAT IS INTUITION and WHY IS IT RELEVANT?

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The term “Intuition” was previously reserved for the new age, touchy-feely, self-help sector. But more and more we are starting to see the big names, the influencers, innovators and great leaders of past and present (Einstein, Tesla, Branson, Jobs, Bezo to name but a few) using it and attributing their genius, breakthroughs, innovation and success to it.

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Intuition is defined as the ability to understand something instinctively without the need for conscious reasoning. The way I like to define it is to hyphenate the word “In-tuition”. “Tuition” meaning teaching or instruction and “In” meaning inner. So intuition is quite simply the ability to receive inner instruction.

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The way we do business is continually changing, and gone is the ability to rely simply on data, research and analysis. Thanks to digitisation and globalisation, it is becoming more and more important in today’s business world for decisions to be made quickly and with a degree of certainty and confidence. There is more and more pressure on leaders to be ahead of the ever changing game of business. In so many ways those who are at the cutting edge of industry already know that this is the next frontier of innovation. Even the U.S. Navy is investing close to 4 million dollars into helping sailors and Marines refine their sixth sense precisely because they know that intuition can superseded intellect in high-stakes situations like the battlefield.

 

A report published in the Harvard Business Review by Thomas Davenport looked whether the role of intuition has a role in the analytics and data driven organisation. Within his research he found that not only did intuition play a key role in many big businesses across that globe but that it is in fact an essential skill to refine for future success within the business domain.

 

An article by Bonnie Marcus published in Forbes entitled ‘Intuition Is An Essential Leadership Tool’, showed that 81% of CEOs with high intuition scores doubled their business in five years.

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IS THERE A SCIENCE TO INTUITION?

 

When we understand the science of intuition and how “hunches”or “gut feelings” can pay off, we can more easily start to assimilate intuition into our business and leadership practices. 

 

We have two hemispheres of our brain, the left and the right. The left hemisphere of the brain is associated with logic, reason and analysis. The right hemisphere is associated with creativity, big picture thinking and of course intuition. Furthermore according to Dr. Orloff, scientists believe intuition operates through the entire right side of our brain, the brain’s hippocampus and through our gut (digestive system has neurons as well). 

 

Most people are conditioned to be unilateral hemisphere dominant, meaning they rely heavily on only one hemisphere. A study conducted in 2013 in part by Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk, found Albert Einstein's brilliance may be linked to the fact that his brain hemispheres were extremely well-connected. The ability to use right brain creativity/intuition and left brain logic/reason simultaneously may have been what made Einstein a genius.

 

More and more influencers of our time are understanding the need to use more than facts, figures, data and statistics in business. In many ways tapping into the power of your intuition is allowing more of your brain to be utilised. It is the ability to know something without analytic reasoning, bridging the gap between the conscious and non-conscious parts of our mind.

 

Our brains are incredibly complex. We can sift through billions of bits of data at any given time. In fact a study, conducted by researchers at the University of California-San Diego, under Roger Bon, estimates that people are every day inundated with the equivalent amount of 34 GB of information, a sufficient quantity to overload a laptop within a week. And somehow, so we don’t short circuit, we have to organize that information. The Reticular Activating System helps with that.