Using intuition effectively for decision making and influence

How to move past unproductive debates and harness your intuitive powers for healthy discussions.

You and your team are debating how to build a feature and diverging opinions are creating tension. Frustrations are running high and opposing parties are losing trust in each other. Both sides seem to intuitively know the answer but neither is able to explain why.

When we operate from a place of intuition, it’s hard to articulate our thoughts in a coherent manner. When economics Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman interviewed firemen about how they were able to react so quickly in complex life-threatening situations, they couldn’t explain themselves either. This is because our brains are able to process a multitude of information and arrive at an answer almost instantly. Kahneman calls this the fast approach. The intuitive approach.

While our intuition has a ton of merit, it’s hard to influence others with the reasoning “because I just know” and we can be perceived as arbitrary, arrogant, uncooperative, and even biased. In situations like these, and in fact for all decisions, we need to translate intuition into concrete objective thought. By doing so, we can help ourselves and others articulate our reasoning in a logical manner that unlocks the team’s ability to have more objective discussions and therefore make better decisions.

In this world of objectivity, logic, and reason, intuition is vastly underappreciated. But by taking advantage of our intuitive thoughts and translating them into logical reasoning, we can expedite our decision making process and lead our team to a more productive state.

What is intuition?

Let’s get one thing clear: intuition is not arbitrary nor is it irrational. Intuition is an immediate reaction to a given stimulus based on all the past experiences we’ve collected over time. It’s an insight that arises spontaneously without conscious reasoning. Gerd Gigerenzer, a psychologist and Director of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, views intuition as a form of unconscious intelligence. One where our brain does the deliberation without us being aware of the process.

Kahneman gives an example of a captain of a fire fighting company in his book Thinking Fast and Slow who suddenly yells “Let’s get out of here!,” just before the house explodes. He wasn’t conscious of how he detected the danger but it turns out that the warmth underneath his feet made him sense the danger that lay just underneath them. His intuition saved the lives of his entire team.

Researchers in the field found that highly experienced individuals tend to compare patterns when making decisions. They are able to recognize regularities, repetitions and similarities between the information available to them and their past experiences. They then imagine how a given situation might play out. This combination enables them to make relevant decisions quickly and competently. — Scientific American

Therefore, intuition is speedy reasoning.

How do we use our intuition to turn opinions into objective thought?

There are two ways to approach decision-making:

1. Top-down: define the decision criteria first, then brainstorm options and weigh them against the criteria.
2. Bottoms-up: start with the intuitive answer (yours or others’) and work backwards to figure out the criteria you haven’t yet been able to articulate.

While approach 1 seems like the most logical and unbiased one, it isn’t the most efficient approach. Because you are already netting out at an answer with approach 2, it’s easier and faster to work backwards and discover your reasoning instead of starting from scratch. A top-down approach is slow because conjuring something from scratch takes more time and thought instead of working with what’s already present.

Some may say that approach 2 is biased and that you’re making up criteria in order for your idea to win. To others, it may appear that way. However, what this approach is doing is taking what you know instinctively and articulating it on paper. Your brain has already done the work for you in a speedy manner (likely due to your expertise and past experiences) and now you’re unwinding that thought process in order to be able to communicate it effectively and find flaws in it. Writing out your reasoning isn’t a biased approach, it is a logical one.

How does approach 2 work?

1. Write out the decision to be made and your intuition’s answer at the top of a blank page.
2. List out all the reasons you can think of in a stream of consciousness on this paper. Note: your first few reasons may be “I don’t know” but if you stick with it for 15–20 minutes, eventually valid reasons will start to come through.
3. Group your reasons by themes and give each theme a name. This is the decision criteria you were using unconsciously.
4. For each criteria, write out why it matters and which ones are potentially more important than others.
5. Transfer all this on a new page and structure it in the following way: criteria, why it matters, how does your and others’ answers measure up to the criteria.

Here’s an example:

Why does this process work in decision making?

It’s faster than a top-down approach. Because you already know the answer, it’s faster to think about the why’s instead of defining the criteria first and starting from scratch. There’s no guarantee that your intuitive answer will still net out to be the right answer with this approach but starting with the answer makes the thinking process faster since you’re not thinking in abstract terms.

You uncover criteria you hadn’t considered. Putting our thoughts on paper sheds light on things our intuition hadn’t considered. When we can visualize the criteria, it’s easy for us and others to then point out what’s missing. This is a critical part in decision making: ensuring you’ve got the right criteria to evaluate your options against.

You uncover where the disagreements lie. Are people disagreeing on the criteria? The weightage? Or the recommended solution? When all of this is laid out on paper, it’s easier to point to specific aspects of the thinking and challenge it specifically. Debating specificities from multiple points of views results in better decision making. Typically this can’t happen until the thought is laid out in this way on paper. This process shifts people from spinning in circles to talking in specifics.

You build trust. Showing our work builds trust because it shows that you’ve thought through the options, considered other peoples’ opinions, and are objectively weighing them against a logical criteria. Unfortunately, intuition is underappreciated in this world of logic and reasoning. So when we can turn our intuitive thinking into something logical that others can understand, we gain their trust.

It makes the answer obvious. When our thought process is externalized on paper, the answer becomes obvious to anyone reading it. Even ourselves. This is because the structure allows anyone to follow your thinking and understand why you are netting out where you are. This isn’t possible when all of the thinking is in your head.

Decisions are made faster. Thought laid out in a logical manner is easy to follow and therefore can be communicated asynchronously. It allows for people to digest the logic in their own time which reduces the need for multiple meetings, speeding up the decision making across multiple stakeholders.

How much time does this process take? What if I don’t have that kind of time?

The upfront costs of doing this work are high. You’ll likely end up spending an hour or more translating your thinking on paper and even more time refining it. You’ll face internal resistance and discomfort towards the work required. But this cost is worth it because a) it solidifies your thinking, b) better decisions are made since you’re able to get everyone’s input on specifics, and c) getting buy-in is expedited and can even happen asynchronously.

However, the more you practice this, the easier and faster it gets. I’ve personally found that the upfront effort to translate unconscious intuitive thinking into a conscious one is worth it for the whole team. Marty Cagan of Silicon Valley Product Group thinks the same.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” — Albert Einstein

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