MBA analyses make decisions seem like a forensic dissection; but better managers zero in on the key elements of a living, changing situation.   It’s much like athletes using a simple, clear image;  game time is not the time for deconstructing into mechanical elements.

Seat-of-the-pants or so much voodoo? Hardly.  In an earlier post, we reviewed Jonah Lehrer’s book on the neurologic science of how we make rational or intuitive decisions.  But if one approach is rational, does that mean the other is irrational?   Somehow, the book leaves us with only a coy platitude that choosing between “Rational” and “Intuitive” processes depends on the situation.

The purpose of this article is to understand just why the brain would choose one path or the other, and therefore how to use the mechanism to better advantage.  Our premise is that man is a purposeful being.   When we make a decision, then, the process is optimized to three factors: time, familiarity, consequence.

Two books talk about how our right brain ( Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke of Insight) and autistics and animals ( Temple Grandin’s Animals in Translation) think in pictures.  These explain why firemen and emergency medical docs might explain their decision-making in a crunch as “telling a story”. What I believe actually happens is the mind quickly grasps the picture, and compares it against its library of other pictures, and connects that with a particular action and its consequence.

The brain might just preemptively say “No”  to paralysis by analysis. The threat might evoke a survival reflex from our reptilian part of the brain. Consider how food poisoning can evoke a strong aversion to a dish or a restaurant for a long time.  Extending that to an even more  local reflex, my hand drops a hot potato long before the brain yelps  “Ow!”.  Or, then again, our emotional amygdala might make us do things in the name of love contrary to all practical logic.

All these are done for a reason – you see it if you look for the intention.

If you think about it, the three factors from the diagram would easily apply to organizational behavior as well as the hierarchy of delegating decisions.  How, then,  do we put this knowledge to practical use?

First off, it’s a good reminder to step back for better clarity.  Projects are understood in the context of their goals.  Conflicting goals can be refereed according to corporate objectives.  Stepping further back for context, we try to grasp the corporate or individual cultures, and values, then purpose.  In the diagram below, we synthesize Stanford’s excellent summation of strategic implementation:

We offer five key insights:
1.    Behavior is purposeful.   It is sometime unreasonable, but it always has its reasons!
2.    Good intuition is based on nonexplicit reasoning, especially when the situation requires quick pre-cognition.
3.    Intuition is trainable.  Mentors and guided experiences are invaluable to the quicker development of good intuition.
4.    Step back for a broader context.    Asking “why”  five times works here, too:  get a deeper understanding of the true purpose.
5.    You determine the culture.  Do people freely question and offer opinions?   Do they feel free to test the edges,  with a reasonable bandwidth for honest mistakes?