Should we trust our intuition? Find out in this guest post by Shim Marom
Common wisdom will tell you that Intuition is an internal perception of reality that is not directly associated with any reasoning process. If you are a project manager early in your career you will most likely seek guidance and mentoring from more experienced project managers. And as you observe their conduct there is a good chance that along the way, when inquiring about this decision or another, you will get a response suggesting that their decision is based on gut-feel, i.e. their intuition.
There is a powerful body of evidence suggesting that some people are ‘gifted’ with consistently accurate intuition that allows them to make successful decisions and predictions about the possible outcome, the result of their action. We all know some “how-to” books, written by professionals, primarily in areas of finance and investments, advising on the steps they have taken in genuinely uncertain times, resulting in out of the ordinary success.
By its very nature, invoking intuition is a product of dealing with situations of uncertainty, or more specifically in the way we react to a possible risk (and opportunity). It is our immediate response to a question that results in an action (or deliberately refraining from one).
In a project environment, intuition can and does play a role in planning activities. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are the ones we mostly rely on to provide planning estimates. We rely on SMEs in varying circumstances; we need their advice to forecast project activities for which they have direct past experience; we also ask for their advice to forecast project activities for which they do not have direct experience but are believed to be close enough to a point where their gut-feel and intuition could provide a good-enough estimate.
Makes sense, doesn’t it?
Well, actually, that depends.
Daniel Kahneman discusses the topic of intuition in his recent book titled “Thinking, Fast and Slow“. He brings examples for both supporting and rejecting the validity and accuracy of intuition, as a decision making tool. He concludes that intuition is only valid when it is associated with a skill. And to acquire that skill two conditions must exist:
- An environment that is sufficiently regular to be predictable, and
- An opportunity to learn these regularities through prolonged practice
When a situation is subject to a statistical regularity then the intuition can be said to be based on a skill. So, for instance, if a developer is asked for the estimated effort for completing a piece of work, the estimate provided should be examined against the above criteria:
- Is the planned development sufficiently similar to work done in the past and, if so,
- How often was this work carried out?
If either one of these parameters is unsatisfactorily answered the chances of the intuitive estimate hitting the mark are low, to say the least.
If you are a project manager early in your career trusting your gut-feel could be successful and propel your professional aspirations into new heights, but only if you are lucky. For most people, trusting their intuition could be a risky proposition, unless that intuition is backed by the conditions outlined above. Make sure you back your professional decisions and directions with the skill and experience necessary for increased chances of success and use your intuition as a backup mechanism only – not the prime tool for making managerial decisions.
Shim Marom (@shim_marom) is a project manager who lives, writes, speaks and works in Melbourne, Australia. Shim is the owner of quantmleap.com, a blog dedicated to project management while incorporating the latest in science and psychology to better understand and explain people and organizational behavior and attitudes.
No related posts.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I like Shim’s point that the key factor here is experience and training. The firefighter or pilot with years of experience and training may well gain benefit from ‘instinct’ – but a newbie had better not rely on that. Perhaps this is correlated with Gladwell’s 10,000 hours concept in Outliers — you need to be that ‘expert’ in order for your ‘instinct’ to be developed enough to serve you.
You can speed up your expert growth by using your intuition to set an answer and then verifying your data and examining your assumptions. Waiting for 10,000 hours is okay but you can greatly accelerate the process by pushing yourself and then examining the basis of your decisions.
Leam
“Shooting from the hip” or “going with your gut” is played up in our culture through media and politicians as an admirable decision-making process. I think we all agree though, even though subjective judgement gets better with experience, in most cases relying solely on subjective judgement is usually a bad idea unless you absolutely must.
With lean practices for my teams using kanban and my business, we run experiments regarding process improvements, features, etc. The expert judgement helps us create better experiments, but the winner is always objectively verified through testing via controlled experimentation. We ‘experts’ learn new stuff all the time this way.
Excellent point Josh.
I haven’t considered the role of the media in promoting and aggrandising those in our society that have been successful, having followed their gut-feel and made decisions (largely in areas of finance and investments) that resulted in substantial gains. This, if anything, proves that statistics does work and that while some are lucky and rip substantial benefits and rewards from following their gut-feel, the majority of us will not be so lucky, and while we will not be able to achieve similar results it is very unlikely that our name will appear in mainstream media as no-one wants to publish or inquire about people who failed.
I have the sneak suspicion (gut-feel?) that some large Australian government driven projects have resulted in spectacular failures because policy makers trusted their intuition and did not constructed their policy decisions on good-old objective analysis and planning.
Hi Leam, I wonder if you could elaborate on the process of acceleration you refer to in your comment. Can you bring an example from your own experience where you were able to utilize this approach?
Certainly, Shim! I work in technology and have for many years. In many places I would respond to operational down time where minutes mean large sums of dollars and sometimes job longevity relies on fast recovery. Early on in my career I realized that I don’t know everything but still have to provide good answers. When I’ve used intuition it’s been because I let my step-by-step brain relax a bit and went with ideas that my sub-conscious came up with. As much as I’d like to use the Force to fix my computers it’s still evident that my brain has absorbed large amounts of information that get processed much faster than I can consciously follow. So after my intuition leads me to a solution and we’re sitting around drinking coffee I go back and figure out what caused the failure and how could it have been tested and avoided. What other systems are like this one and likely to fail in a similar fashion? What else can we do to prevent or minimize this problem and how can we recover faster? Doing a root cause analysis right after the event keeps us motivated and fresh and forces you to learn more about the system than you consciously knew. It has often led to “Oh crap! This other bit is about to fail too!” moments.
The use of intuition is critical when the budget does not allow for detailed research. There is a military axiom that a good plan when you need it is better than a great plan after it’s too late. Of course, to ignore facts when you can get them because you’re a cowboy at heart isn’t the best plan either. I think your article is good; people should understand that they need to take the full amount of time allowed to gather facts and make a decision. No more and no less, take all the time that is practically and by budget allowed. And if you have to guess, once the time crisis is past then test your reasoning and facts. Sometimes it builds confidence, sometimes if gives you better information.
Thanks for elaborating, Liam.
You raise an interesting point that certainly was not discussed in my post. There are circumstances where a quick or time limited response is required. Should you procrastinate and withhold a decision just because you can’t trust your intuition – certainly not, that would be procedurally wrong. The point I was trying to make is more regarding the quality of the intuition rather than the fact that intuition is being ‘intuitively’ used. While both you and I make intuitive decisions we need to remember that the quality of the decision or action taken is dependent on two prime factors, as outlined in the post above. Your answer addresses an important facet of dealing with intuition based decisions – that is the time-out required to evaluate and validate their effectiveness and reliability. Was the decision justified? Did the outcome follow the perceived direction? Was the outcome merely luck based or would similar outcome occur should this decision be made again under similar circumstances? As you demonstrate, a thinking person will not take an intuitive outcome for granted and will apply a ‘lessons learned’ to evaluate its future effectiveness and reusability.
Thanks again for your response.
Cheers, Shim.