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In the world of business, decisions matter. Should you trust your gut or rely on hard data?
“You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life,” said Steve Jobs, the late CEO of tech innovator Apple.
Indeed, Jobs is a good case study to analyze the difference between relying on intuition versus data in business decision-making. As the above quote demonstrates, Jobs was known for making instinct-based decisions. However, when it comes to running your business, every decision matters. They play a massive role in the life cycle of every business, no matter the size.
Thanks to today’s technological advances, businesses have vast data available to help make informed decisions. Yet despite the immense amounts of information available, many companies rely on instinct and intuition rather than facts to make essential business decisions.
Is trusting your gut better than relying on data and facts regarding critical business decisions? Let’s find out.
As a business owner, you develop your sixth sense or intuition, which can be a valuable tool for helping you make good decisions for your company. Depending on your gut instincts allows you to access your innate knowledge that’s not always consciously available — but is a wealth of information we’ve been gathering for our entire lives.
Whether you call it gut feelings or intuition, everyone experiences it. For instance, you may go by your gut feeling regarding business deals, projects or customers. You get a feeling; you have a sense of what is going on without consulting objective data or facts. For experts, it might be wiser to rely on their gut instincts rather than external data to make business decisions because they’ve spent their professional careers harnessing their skills and cultivating a specific knowledge base. So, gathering external opinions, facts and big data could muddy the waters and, ultimately, waste time and energy.
Intuition can play an essential role in your business. Trusting your intuition can help in many ways, such as not agreeing to a risky deal because your gut was telling you something wasn’t right. Some of the ways you can rely on your intuition may include:
In the age of information overload, relying on your gut instincts may seem counterintuitive. However, studies, like this one in Psychological Science, have shown that listening to your gut can yield more accurate and confident decisions. [Read on to learn how to understand and incorporate customer emotions into your sales strategies.]
We live in the information age, and everything is accessible instantly at your fingertips. Because we have easy access to so much information, we look to facts, science and data to confirm our ideas and decisions rather than relying on our instincts. Leveraging big data and embracing business intelligence has been the trend for the last couple of years, and it’s easy to see why. [Learn more about incorporating facts and emotions in your sales strategy.]
Making decisions based on sophisticated data can lead to significant leaps in growth, innovation and commercial success. Of course, some decisions are better suited for relying on your gut instincts. Still, most business decisions require gathering and consulting data and insights to ensure your choices align with your overall objectives and strategies. Basing your decisions on hard data can also help you gain the support and traction you need to execute your vision.
Making decisions is complex. It involves different processes: reason, data, intuition and emotion. Instead of choosing one over the other, merge using your gut with gathering facts and data to make the most informed and confident business decisions possible.