The Bull in the Boardroom
We’ve all been there. After a long and tiring round of discussion regarding a particularly complex situation, you’re close to agreement. Just as the debate is closing in on resolution, the door opens, and in charges the bull. Intuition.
Someone’s intuition disagrees with the emerging consensus, and it charges around being as agreeable as, well, a bull in a china shop.
So how do we tame this beast and, better yet, get it working for us? The strength of intuition is well known and respected in business, so we can’t exactly ask it to leave.
photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar
Nor would we want to. The intuitions of your decision team are far too valuable to ignore.
What’s missing in this situation is the right seat at the table. We need a framework within our decision-making process that can accommodate intuition, quantify it where possible, and consider it as we would any other data source we may have at our disposal.
Without a seat at the table, the bull of intuition will either disrupt consensus-building behind closed doors or, worse yet, reveal itself around the water cooler where the damage to your organization could be much greater.
Having intuition at the table will result in better decisions, as long as it’s participation is orderly – not charging down your business’ halls.
