Logic and reason alone can no longer guide us toward innovation or success.  They will not be enough to get us to the level of creativity and reinvention we need to address the challenges of the new economy.  We need to deal with the deeper part of human nature: intuition and instinct.  Science, evidence in the real world, and experience tell us that our intuition and our instincts, although sometimes difficult to completely understand, very often point us in the right direction.  Sometimes they can even save our lives.  To positively influence the deeper part of ourselves, we need to appeal to the heart and engage the guts. We need to honor the sometimes-cryptic clues sent up from many accomplished people in science, industry, and the military.  As business leaders we can take steps to create a corporate atmosphere that speaks to the hearts and instincts as well as the minds of our employees.  Doing so puts a great deal of agility and creative power to work for our companies.  One powerful way we can harness the creative power of our teams is by introducing rituals at key moments in business ideation and development.  Management and leadership—which increasingly require dealing with human motivation, behavioral change, and, now more than ever, sustainable innovation—are much more about the intangible part of business than about what’s tangible, much more about the unconscious part of human interactions that about the conscious part.

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