The business world is full of dos, don’ts, software aids and more. Depending on the field you’re in and the areas you’re lacking, people will have all manner of advice to help you get ahead. For example, when managing a global workforce, common knowledge suggests that understanding cultural differences, taking time zones into account, and maintaining effective communication tools are crucial. Without these provisions in place, productivity will suffer.
However, when you look beyond the logical and practical, there are times when the right answers actually come from inside us. Everyone will have heard the phrase “trust your gut,” but what does it actually mean and can it be an effective decision-making tool in business?
The Psychology of Intuition
In layman’s terms, gut instinct is an intangible feeling that pushes us in one direction or another in certain situations. For example, you might be walking late at night and something inside tells you not to take a right turn. You’re not sure why, but your senses tell you that it’s a bad idea. Whether that decision is justified or not, the fact remains that something made you move in a certain direction.
Exploring this idea, psychologists have actually found that gut instinct, or intuition, is the way we deal with potentially complex situations. As noted by Psychology Today, intuitions come from pattern matching. By linking current situations to experiences we’ve had in the past, we can subconsciously get a “feeling” for the right move. Building on this psychologists believe it’s possible to improve the quality of your intuitions through practice.
Because we’re calling upon scenarios stored in our long-term memory, the more we think about them the more accessible they become. Additionally, the more times we can experience similar situations, the stronger our intuitions should be. Indeed, as Psychology Today’s Al Pittampalli has said, “our intuitions are only as good as the database of patterns that we draw them from.”
Gut Instinct in Poker: When to Hold’em and When to Fold’em
Putting these ideas into context, we can look at the game of poker. Although modern players are taught to think logically and use mathematics to guide their decisions, gut instinct is a major part of the game. In fact, if you look at old Hollywood representations of poker, the climax of any scene often comes down to one player saying to themselves “I just don’t think they’ve got it.”
In the old days, before online poker made fancy jargon popular, all the top pros would rely on their gut instinct. The mistake people often assume is that old-school grinders were less skilled than today’s high rollers simply because they didn’t use math in the same way. However, quite the opposite is true. As 888poker’s resident mind coach Jared Tendler explains, gut instinct isn’t a mythical feeling that comes from nowhere.
In offering a “gut-based” strategy for variants such as 7 Card Stud, Tendler states that intuition comes from “unconscious knowledge.” This ties into the idea of building a database as outlined by Pittampalli. Put simply, the more correct plays (i.e. winning poker strategy) you can learn, practice and store inside your unconscious mind, the better your instincts will be.
The Hierarchy of Knowledge
For Tendler, there is a hierarchy of knowledge that always ends with our unconscious mind. Essentially the foundation, this part of the hierarchy often determines how many correct moves we make in a given situation. Why? Well, when we’ve weighed up the variables in our conscious mind and can’t come up with an answer, we always fall back on what we feel is the right move. Based on this, the more correct knowledge you can push into your subconscious, the better chance you have of making the right gut-based decision.
Taking this a step further, Tendler advocates only relying on your gut when you’re winning at the poker table. Doing this helps to reinforce positive behavior and, in turn, strengthen our internal database. Conversely, if you rely on your gut when things are going badly, it can reinforce negative habits and lead to your gut giving you the wrong answer.
Gut Instinct in Business: To Listen or Not to Listen
As you can see, your intuitions aren’t born out of thin air. In reality, our gut is another way of describing our unconscious mind which, in practice, is a product of our experiences. Therefore, as a business owner, you can only rely on your gut if you’ve got the requested knowledge. Even though we’ll all have a base of intuition garnered through life experiences, they may not all apply in business.
For example, we may have come across may different types of people in the past and have a feeling when someone isn’t a nice or reliable person. However, this skill doesn’t always directly transfer to the interview process. Yes, it can help but you can’t rely on it completely. To go with your gut and trust the decision to hire someone is right, you need a lot of experience in interview settings. Again, you need to feed your database with information before it becomes truly useful as a business tool.
Therefore, if you’re looking to get ahead in business, you can certainly use your instincts. However, it’s important to be cautious. If you’re a newbie or the situation is unfamiliar, it’s much better to look at the situation logically and work from there. Because you won’t have the necessary intuition to make the right call, it might be best to avoid what you gut is telling. However, if the situation is familiar and something inside tells you to go one way when the “facts” suggest another, there’s every chance your gut could be right.
