[Continuing our series “ABCs for Managers…”]
A non-tricky & common riddle to begin with: Given any random set of 23 people, what is the chance that atleast 2 share the same birthday? Is it roughly 30%, 20%, 10% or even less…..
For people who are trained or have studied such problems, the answer will be easy.
For the majority though, what is your approximation? What is your intuition saying? There is a high chance your intuition is incorrect, because the chances of a shared birthday is better than 50%.
Our brain does not intuit mathematically unless it is trained to do so. And Maths is an absolute science which is extremely rational. Which means with our brain, there is a high chance to not intuit rationally.
To intuit is a reflex action of the brain.
This reflex means:
- We are reacting on basis of our conditioning and the way our neural pathways in our brain have been formed already.
- There is a huge scope of conditioning of our behaviour without us even realising it.
- Our default behaviour is to apply what we know on top of things that we don’t know, making us believe we are good in finding patterns. Remember the Law of Instrument.
- We tend to remember all cases where our intuition was correct and not the ones where it was incorrect. This just reinforces our belief in our intuition.
- The worst part of intuition as a reflex is that it implies that a decision has already been taken. Our subsequent actions are derived from that 1st decision we take.
To intuit is not reasoning, an intuition is not a data point, it is not a decision criteria unless the Intuit muscle has been trained. The training can happen in narrow, repeatable environments — a mental activity like chess, a physical activity like fencing.
For better outcomes in normal environments, we need to build better behaviours around intuition:
- Know that the intuition is a reflex.
- Let the reflex be an alarm, but not considered as alarming.
- Let the reflex not be a decision.
- Let intuition be a call to action for further exploration, not the foundation for a decision.
Another riddle, based on a true story this time: Roughly around the same time, we came across two prospects. The first prospect was very choosy, finicky about things not related to work, was dropping signs of not being able to afford us. The second prospect was someone I had known and trusted for close to ten years. Only one of them paid us money for the work we did. Not just paid money but paid on time accompanied with a topping of helpful gestures and compliments.
Guess which one paid the money? Now drop the intuition and guess again!
