When Can I Trust Gut Feelings?

Posted on March 16, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Gut feelings about potential threats and opportunities are not always correct, and neuroscientists debate the conditions under which the feelings precede the conscious awareness of the clues themselves. But our instinctual skills evolved to ensure our survival, and research findings suggest that in some people those skills are exquisitely sensitive. So although the many serious researchers who say thatgut feelings are not always correct do have a point, they may be missing the most important point: gut feelings have other functions that transcend the logic of reason, and to leverage their role fully we should not evaluate gut feelings on a narrow basis of whether they are right or wrong.

When we engage in solving a problem using logical skills, we follow certain rules or protocols based on past experience with a similar problem. The rules and protocols we follow are generally well defined and measurable. If we succeed in solving our problem, we typically attribute it to the efficacy of the protocols we followed. If we fail at solving our problem, we can look back and analyze the steps we took to find where our approach failed.

Conversely, when we engage in solving a problem using our instincts, we follow a path that is highly specific to our problem and ourselves at a particular moment in time. If someone asks us how we solved the problem, we may be able to recount what we did, but even a detailed recounting of what we did will not necessarily apply to a similar problem. And that’s fine, because instinctual problem solving isn’t necessarily about replication; it’s about dynamic adaptation to circumstances. The problem is that when we are successful, we (and others) may attribute our success simply to luck, even though calling on our instincts is a skill we can develop. So although we may never be able to measure the efficacy of instinct-based problem solving precisely, that doesn’t mean it is a random phenomenon. The difference between logic-based problem solving and instinct-based problem isn’t necessarily efficacy; the difference lies in our ability or inability to precisely identify cause and effect. And when we can’t identify cause and effect, we feel out of control or inefficient.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

Instinct and Intuition Can be Trained

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Aside from business executives, there are other professionals who use intuition and instinct, and in some cases it is about crude survival tactics. In war, life-and-death decisions must be made instantly, with little if any time for rational analysis. And what’s more impressive is that the army has discovered that the ability to act effectively from gut feelings can be improved through training.

Time after time, the army has learned the “the speed with which the brain reads and interprets sensations like the feelings in one’s own body and emotions in the body language of others is central to avoiding imminent threats.” The U.S. military has spent billions of dollars to protect against improvised explosive devices (IEDs), investing in hardware and technology to seek and destroy these homemade roadside bombs. But experts say it is the human brain that has proven to be the most perceptive detection system. Troops often credit their experience and perception—their gut feelings—for their ability to notice and foil IED attacks.

U.S. troops are a central focus of a large effort to understand how it is that in a life-or-death situation some people’s brains can sense danger and act on it well before others can. Experience matters on the battleground. If you have seen something before, you are more likely to anticipate it the next time. Yet it is not just experience that matters. Research suggests that something else is at work too. “Small differences in how the brain processes images, how well it reads emotions and how it manages surges in stress hormones help explain why some people sense imminent danger before most others do.”

Unfortunately, for some time feelings have been perceived as having little to do with rational decision making. In fact, it has long been thought that they just get in the way of it. But according to Dr. Antonio Damasio, director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, “Now that position has reversed. We understand emotions as practical action programs that work to solve a problem, often because we’re not conscious of it. These processes are at work continually.” All scientific facts point to the evidence of an inner knowing preceding our rational mind.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

How Instinct and Intuition Can Help You Navigate the Economy 3.0 (Part 2)

Posted on March 1, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

In the 1960s, Dr. Douglas Dean, along with his colleague John Mihalasky, studied approximately five thousand executives. Eighty percent of them said they believed in extrasensory perception (ESP) and used it to anticipate and seize profitable business opportunities. ESP is casually referred to as a sixth sense, gut instinct, or hunch, and for this reason ESP pertains to our subject matter: the importance and the role of instinct and intuition in decision making. This belief in ESP did not stem from the fact these highly successful businessmen had any theoretical knowledge of the subject, nor did it indicate that they would seek advice from a person with psychic abilities. It was simply the reflection of a direct experience with these abilities and their concrete applications to business. Dean and Mihalasky also studied a particular subgroup among the initial five thousand executives. They focused on 165 presidents and CEOs of American companies who had doubled or more than doubled their company profits in a five-year period. They found that 80 percent of them had above-average predictive computer test scores; that is, they demonstrated precognitive abilities. This piece of research on the use of everyday intuition for decision making in business led the authors to believe that precognitive ability was a reliable indicator of financial success. According to the authors, measuring potential aptitudes for ESP would be a much better indicator of professional success than other psychometric instruments. Some of the highly successful global companies I have worked for, like Estée Lauder Companies and L’Oréal, do give great importance to intuition. Mrs. Estée Lauder herself would rely greatly on her intuition, and today Estée Lauder Companies CEO Fabrizio Freda insists on maintaining and supporting intuition–in conjunction with a strong analytical capacity–in the work of his teams as a fundamental aspect in the success of the company. L’Oreal’s former CEO, François Dalle, who built the beauty company into a world-renowned multinational, insisted on “intuiting what is arising” as a key competence the beauty company executives had to develop and work with. This type of belief is not limited to the beauty industry. Konosuke Matsushita, Japanese industrialist and founder of Panasonic, once said. “No matter how deep a study you make, what you really have to rely on is your own intuition.”

Dean and Mihalasky’s well-known research has been available since 1974, the year of its publication. It is not new knowledge. And since then, similar studies have produced similar results. Another study was conducted in the 1980s, using two thousand managers over a period of two years. This study revealed that executives used intuition like “explorers” to “foresee” the correct path to follow, but they did so secretly. A well-known 1994 study conducted at the Harvard Business School produced a global survey of more than 1300 practicing managers in nine countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Austria, Brazil, France, India, Japan, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Of the 1,300 polled executives, 80 percent explained their success through decisions made intuitively, and 75 percent claimed they used intuition and logic equally. However, the study also shows that more than 50 percent of them would not publicly admit to relying on intuition. These last two examples prove that gut feelings and intuition are widely resorted to in business, but that there is definite prejudice against this type of aptitude.

So how come organizations I know and organizations I hear about still evaluate executives on criteria such as team management, interpersonal communication, entrepreneurship, and, more recently, emotional intelligence, but they do not integrate in their evaluation templates the ability to manifest as well as encourage in others instinctual intelligence and intuition at work? How come classes about intuitive skills are still so rare in business schools? A first answer seems obvious: we are culturally uncomfortable with what’s not exact and what cannot be demonstrated. Even if research shows that many successful business minds use intuition, it remains hard to conceptualize intuition and make it a tangible capacity that can be taught and measured. Besides, to share an intuitive opinion or to defend it in a fact-based environment such as a business presentation requires self-confidence and courage. All these issues are cause for leaving the challenging topic of intuition out of modern society in which the scientific mind is clearly seen as a warrant for truth and reliability.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

How Instinct and Intuition Can Help You Navigate the Economy 3.0 (Part One)

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

No, no! You’re not thinking, you’re just being logical.
–Niels Bohr, Nobel Prize winner in physics

To date, our collective approach to human intelligence often relies on outdated concepts. The misplaced expectations we place on the ability of instinct and intuition to guide us in life often obliterates their original contributions. We expect intuition and instinct to give us black and white answers that logic can evaluate. It is simply not their function. Yet this misunderstanding of intuition and instinct. which is evident in questions like “Can I trust my intuition to make the right decision?” or “Can I rely on my guts to do this?” is often encountered in business. This in turn limits our ability to better understand the breadth and depth of a situation and make decisions with a broader perspective, which is exactly what instinct and intuition are meant allow us to do.

It is necessary to better understand how our brain functions in order to better leverage its creative capacity for in-depth reflection, original thinking, and efficient and sustainable decision making. But with the exception of rare initiatives, business schools and educational institutions in general seem quite resistant to change in this field of interest. Our economy is highly complex and unpredictable. This makes traditional decision making, which is predominantly guided by the laws of logic, inoperative or plain dangerous. Therefore we need to better understand our mental life–and its larger potential, which is hidden to the conscious mind yet accessible to the newly educated and insightful individual; this is where intuition and instinct com into play to help us identify in the midst of complex systems the decisive piece of information that would have otherwise eluded our rational mind.

Instinctual aptitudes can be instrumental in business. People who employ instinct and intuition have a more and more decisive competitive advantage when navigating in the new economy. But what exactly is instinct? Here are some simple definitions to keep in mind:

– Instinct is our innate inclination toward a particular behavior (as opposed to a learned response)

– A gut feeling–or a hunch–is a sensation that appears quickly consciousness (noticeable enough to be acted on if one chooses to) without us being fully aware of the underlying reasons for its occurrence.

– Intuition is a process that gives us the ability to know something directly without analytic reasoning, bridging the between the gap conscious and nonconscious parts of our mind, and also between instinct and reason.

In everyday language these three terms can at times be substituted for one another. Some people may also understand or define these words differently. But at The Human Company, these definitions reflect the specific meaning we attach to each.
Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

Can Mozart Manage ADD?

Posted on February 8, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Companies like Shell, IBM, and DuPont use music to create an atmosphere that accelerates learning and optimizes memory. Music is a powerful way to access a joyful, playful state of mind. It is also a powerful way to access a relaxed and meditative state of mind, which is another facet of being playful. We know today the impact of music on our emotional state, concentration, learning ability, and intellectual agility in new situations. Dr. Don Campbell has authored a few books on the subject; one of them is The Mozart Effect, which was greatly inspired by the work of late French ENT doctor Alfred Tomatis. Campbell writes that forty-three of the largest industrial companies in the world play music in their offices. Some of them have recorded up to 33-percent reduction in administrative errors. In times of intense mental concentration, our pulse and blood pressure increase, making it harder to concentrate. To counteract this, baroque music in particular is a very efficient way to induce feelings of relaxation because many compositions are performed at a tempo of 60 beats per minute, with long sections of music at the same tempo, mimicking a slow-paced human heartbeat and inducing a natural state of relaxation and improved learning ability. Recent research shows the music fires up certain parts of our brain responsible for memory, language, movement, and our sense of rhythm. Professor Anne Blood, a researcher in neuropsychology at McGill University in Montreal, proved that different types of music fire up different parts of the brain. It can be very useful to manage stress, anxiety, and attention deficit disorder in the workplace.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

How Artists Teach Kohler Best Practices in Innovation

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

A notable number of companies have artist-in-residence programs. American manufacturer Kohler Co., based in Wisconsin, is one of them. Since 1873, Kohler has been producing household equipment, including plumbing fixture, furniture, tile and stone. Seen as a renowned leader in this area, Kohler is at the forefront of design, craftsmanship, and innovation. One way they sustain a high level of innovation is through an ongoing collaboration between art and industry, and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Founded in 1974 it remains unique among all American artist residency programs. It has provided artists with an entrée to an industrial setting through two- to six- month stays in the pottery, foundry, and enamel shops at Kohler. Up to two dozen artists per year have the opportunity to learn new ways of thinking and working. Here they are able to produce entire bodies of work that would otherwise be impossible to execute in their own studios. Sophisticated technologies, unlimited access to technical expertise, materials, equipment, studio space, housing and transportation, plus a weekly stipend, create an unusually supportive environment. Over time, hundreds of arts and industrial employees have built rapport as they work side by side and learn from each other’s approaches to work. Through the arts program Kohler aims to give its employees the opportunity to learn from the proximity of artists at work. They can observe the artists’ creative process, see how hard work has to become play to produce a creative outcome, and develop a better understanding of how to inspire creativity. They can deduce best practices about managing the creative process and see their value in real life: the role of giving oneself permission to fail, the necessity of trial and error, and the importance of a space conducive to creativity.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

Navigating the shift to play or Get Over Inertia (Part 4)

Posted on January 25, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Because creativity is such an important factor of success in business today, play should be part of every CEO’s mandate, and companies should be rated according to the level of playfulness of their culture in the same way as they are rated as a great place to work or as a socially responsible organization. A number of practical steps can be followed to navigate this cultural shift toward play, which then can become easier than it seems.

If innovation is key to corporate success, and if play is the door to innovation, then the next logical question (logic does have it place!) is how to create a corporate atmosphere that is conducive to play, how to turn workers into players.

Think about what play look like. It is personal, engaging, and interactive. It is often exuberant and messy. It is filled with light, color, and sound. When you think about play, you may instinctively think about a children’s playground or children’s toys. Now, think about corporate offices, or, more specifically, corporate boardrooms. There are lots of straight lines in boardrooms, (or perhaps, artistically, an elegantly curved accent wall); there is typically an imposing table made from fine polished wood or sleek metal. That table likely suggests a hierarchical seating arrangement that people intuitively understand: the boss will sit at the head of the table and the chief advisor will sit next to the boss or perhaps will anchor the other end. The rest of the employees will fill in the sides of the table. So, before the meeting even starts, everyone knows his or her relative importance. And everyone knows that polite behavior is expected: sit up straight, papers stacked neatly in front of you, a pen at the ready, smartphone close by in case of an emergency.

These rigid boardrooms are where major strategic decisions are being made about innovation and the future of our organizations. They represent a very logical environment geared toward conscious conversations that will unfold in a very linear and efficient way. They appeal to the 20 percent of our intelligence that lives in our conscious mind with its wealth of creative ideas, and the intelligence that we can reach through play.

Dr. Marian Cleeves Diamond, one of the world’s foremost neuro-anatomists advocates the establishment of “playful environments.” I too believe that we need to create offices, boardrooms, and activities that engage our playful nature—a corporate sandbox or playground. We are playful by nature and efficient by necessity. So let’s embrace our nature, and less effort will be needed for the same, or better, results. When we do this we can break through the mental barriers that are keeping us stuck. Certain corporations are already doing this. Some of the things that they do to create a play-friendly atmosphere include:

– Allocating significant time in which employees are explicitly encouraged to play

– Creating, or giving employees access to, physical spaces that are conducive to play

– Giving employees implicit and explicit permission to “fail” or be “unproductive” in their pursuit of innovation.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

Get Past Inertia (Part 3)

Posted on January 18, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

In a group, because relationship add complexity, inertia grows exponentially more difficult to overcome. My inertia plus your inertia is more that 1 + 1 = 2, and when we add a half-dozen colleagues or try to take on a company with hundreds or thousands of employees, the task is truly formidable. Even if Kim decides she is ready to be brave and try a new way of organizing the Monday morning meeting, all of a sudden she confronts the realization that her change will affect her staff members. What if they don’t like her new approach to meeting protocol? Will they refuse to cooperate? Stop having lunch with her? Go over her head, complain to her boss, and expose her to a negative performance review? Kim has a problem. How can she try something new without so unnerving her colleagues that they stonewall a potentially good idea before it ever gets off the ground?

So, in addition to the natural preference for staying with a mode of being that has proven itself to be safe, getting past inertia is also difficult because of the emotional reaction of others. You have to show people that change will be beneficial to them; you have to make it both nonthreatening and inspiring. Play is key to overcoming the emotional component of inertia.

You are probably familiar with the saying that you must fight fire with fire. Dr. Stuart Brown, head of the National Institute for Play concluded, after years of research, that “play is no less important than oxygen…it’s a powerful force in nature that helps determine the likelihood of the very survival of the human race.” When we realize that the part of our brain that is responsible for our survival (the fight-or-flight response) is the same part of our brain that contains our capacity for play, it puts play in a new, more powerful, and clarifying light.

Play in face lives eye-to-eye with inertia; both are rooted in our brainstem, where you also find the part of the brain responsible for our survival. Play and inertia are in the same weight class, peers in a very exclusive executive suite where core strategic decisions about our present and future are made. But they are having a little war. Inertia, the more conservative of the two, believes that the smart move is to not move at all, to stay with the plan that got us this far safely. Play, the wild child, wants to dream a little dream, take the afternoon off, find Atlantis and create a new society there, because sitting here is, quite frankly, killing its buzz.

Play—our wildly creative and childlike nature—opens the emotional door. It offers an arena in which people become naturally more flexible. For example, think about music. You go to a rock or jazz concert and when the music starts you may sit or stand quietly, taking it in, being polite, and heaving appropriately. But over the course of the evening the music takes you over and you become more comfortable, then relaxes; you may start tapping your foot or swaying in time with the beat, or even dancing spontaneously with the stranger next to you. You behavior just changed without any effort on your part. This is the magic of play. Knowing that play is rooted in the same brain area as our instinct for survival is a good enough reason to give it the benefit of the doubt.

One you let the genie out of the bottle, once play is in full swing and inertia banished (at least at that particular moment), things ca move fast This is especially true with a large group, because just as it is harder to move a group out of its inertia, once the groups does get moving, it can be force to be reckoned with—in the best possible way. Then the challenge transforms into how to manage your newly creative, very energized team. How to channel their creativity into the winning innovations your company seeks without putting a damper on their enthusiasm. Playful energy will beget as many dead end and failures as it will successes. You have to be able to tolerate this, and you have to create an atmosphere in which your team will be able to tolerate it—even better, embrace it.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

Get Past Inertia (Part 2)

Posted on January 11, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

It is relatively easy to see how play can generate fabulous new ideas, but what is less obvious is the critical role of play in giving those ideas a chance at life against some very serious odds. Innovation is change, and change sends many of us running for cover—for good reason. Change activates our survival instincts and is at least partly responsible for our tendency toward inertia, and inertia, again is a serious barrier to innovation.

Experts agree that the critical stage of innovation is implementation. Implementation is where the rubber meets the road. It requires us to change our behavior, and changing behavior is not only an intellectual but also an emotional challenge. It also requires us to step into the unknown. But perhaps the greatest challenge is that it requires us to overcome inertia, and that is something that humans are hardwired to resist. That hardwiring is key to understanding how inertia works and what its function is.

The human brain wants to say where it is, in the comfort zone. If we stay in our comfort zone, we don’t have to struggle to survive. We minimize the risk to our survival by staying where we know we are safe. I often explain to my MBA students that the reason they take the same seat in class every week, and the reason we lay our towels in the same area of the beach every summer weekend, is that we are, at our core, instinctual animals. Once we have chosen a seat and made it through class safely without being attacked, the part of our brain responsible for our survival tells us that our best option is to repeat that behavior, because in a way it is the most economical use of our energy. As part of its strategy for survival, our brain wants to conserve energy, so once we sit in a particular spot and know that it’s safe, we will subconsciously want to sit there every time and avoid having to reevaluate the safety of a new spot.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

Get Past Inertia (Part One)

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Arie de Geus, an ex-Shell executive turned consultant, has researched why certain companies over one hundred years old have been so successful. The twenty-seven companies he studied were able to successfully get past inertia, sustain themselves, and grow over time. They managed to withstand economic changes while staying true to their mission, without resorting solely to the tactic of acquiring companies to stay afloat in their market. He found three characteristics common to these successful companies:

Once we start moving in a certain direction or doing something a certain way it is hard to stop or change. That is inertia. And while this is true for individuals, it is even stronger in a group dynamic. If you want to innovate, you need to change. And in order to effect change you need to overcome the natural tendency toward inertia.

They practice fiscal conservancy.
They are open to new ideas from both inside and outside the organization.
They have established a strong community of values that resonates with their employees, making them feel they can take risks and not be fired if they don’t succeed—the feeling of belonging to a community helps overcome the fear of failure and the anticipation of potential negative consequences at a personal level.

Although point one relates to classic best practices in business, points two and three tell us why play—something not in the typical business best-practices toolbox—is key in a work culture in ensure the longevity of an organization. Openness to new ideas and a fundamental level of trust are inherent in a playful atmosphere, and play is an essential ingredient in generating innovative ideas.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.