Taking the mystery out of intuitive decision making

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96 Academy of Management Executive November • reflect on past decisions and the role that intuition played and attempt to learn from any mistakes; • practice applying intuition in work situations or with hypothetical scenarios, cases, or exercises; • watch and observe when and how others employ their intuition; • become educated about intuitive decision making by reading books and articles, and attending conferences; • learn to take risks when making decisions without being afraid of the consequences; • practice making decisions without all the data necessary. Meditation, journal writing, and mind may also be useful in becoming more knowledgeable about intuition. Managers should be increasingly concerned with developing their employees by using jobbased experiential learning strategies. For example, job rotation, or lateral career moves, exposes employees to numerous decision-making scenarios and decision-making styles from which they can learn vicariously.^o Job rotations also help managers quickly collect data about the organization's business and work practices. Training and development programs feed managers' intuitive skills by giving them experience in solving business problems.^' To develop employees' intuitive potential, top executives should pay close attention to how the corporate culture may be explicitly or implicitly discouraging the use of intuition. Indeed, research suggests that intuition flourishes only if it is valued in an organization.22 If an organization's work environment, leadership, political climate, and socialization processes do not support the use of intuition, then many employees will rely solely on objective methods and discount lessons learned from To develop employees' intuitive potential top executives should pay close attention to how the corporate culture may be explicitly or implicitly discouraging the use 0/ intuition. their personal database of experience. Therefore, organizations should facilitate and selectively encourage employees who incorporate their intuitive skills in the appropriate decision scenarios. Specifically, upper-level managers should reinforce employees' use of intuition in situations that are more likely to benefit from intuitive skills. Incorporating intuition into decision making appears relevant and applicable in the following scenarios: • when decisions need to be consistent with the organization's culture and values; • when time is of the essence; • when explicit cues are lacking because policies, rules, guidelines, or expert guidance are absent; • when uncertainty prevails because of new product planning or strategy formulation; • when quantitative analyses require a check and balance. Because such scenarios have become increasingly common in today's workplace, the ability to effectively engage one's intuition is becoming more important. A vice president of human resources in a small firm stated: "Often I have found myself in situations without access to specialists or consultants and I needed to be willing to use my intuition and just go for it."^^ Organizational mindsets must be modified to help eliminate the myths about intuition so that it can be used effectively in the workplace. Top managers need to transcend traditional linear decision making by exploring and appropriately integrating nonlinear approaches when addressing complex business decisions.^^ The benefits of doing so may represent a viable source of competitive advantage in the 21st century. Appendix A: Sample and Study Methodology Study participants were selected from membership of the National Management Association (NMA) and from author contacts. Potential participants were sent an introductory letter describing the nature of the study and including the interview questions. Thirty-nine percent of the individuals contacted volunteered to participate, and complete data were obtained from 74 percent. Although participants were not randomly chosen, none self-selected into the study, thus limiting the biases of self-selection. The group included 60 professionals employed in various industry segments. The 39 men and 21 women worked in an array of medium to large organizations, in both the public and private sectors, and were from across the United States. The average total years of work experience was 27.5 (SD = 9.7), the mean organizational tenure was 15.9 years {SD = 9.6} and the average job tenure was 6.4 years (SD = 6.5 years). The vast majority of partic-
1999 Buike and Miller 97 ipants had master's, bachelor's, or associate's degrees, or multiple degrees. Industry segments included 14 respondents in space flight operations and aerospace engineering, 12 in public administration, 12 in manufacturing, 11 in communication/transportation/utilities, and 11 in services.^^ A pilot study with seven business professionals was conducted prior to the main study to determine the validity of the content and the appropriateness of the interview protocol. We used results of the pilot study to clarify question wording and to arrange questions into logical groupings. The pilot study results also pointed to the importance of providing the interview questions ahead of the scheduled interview to enhance participant reflection. In the main study, the second author conducted and taped semi-structured phone interviews to obtain rich description. The potential for biased responses was minimized by asking participants only the questions in the interview protocol, by following up only with questions that helped respondents clarify or elaborate upon their answers, and by cross-checking interviewer notes with taped conversations. The results are based on an analysis of the interview responses using thematic analysis and a constant comparative method.^^ We constantly compared interviewee responses, with the goal of organizing the data into systematic categories of analysis by seeking recurring themes. To enhance the trustworthiness of our interpretations,^^ we also employed multiple sources of data. The second author created a journal as an additional data source to identify recurring themes. The first author provided a reliability check by listening to several of the telephone interviews, taking notes, and then comparing the two sets of notes. We found a 96-percent rate of agreement in these sets of notes. In addition, the first author reviewed a randomly selected subset of the second author's journal to independently validate the identified themes. This confirmed the generation of similar themes. Finally, to enhance the credibility of the data, we conducted member checks to confirm the viability of our interpretations.28 A summary of the findings was presented to a subset (seven percent) of our sample, based on our interpretation of the data. Each individual reported that the findings appeared to have significant face validity. Appendix B: The Nature of Intuition Researchers have conceptualized intuition as a sixth sense, a paranormal power, a gut instinct. an evaluative affect, an innate personality trait, and an accumulation of experience.^^ One of our objectives was to determine how closely the definitions of the professionals we surveyed paralleled those in the literature. The results are highlighted in Table 1. Several constructs—creativity, tacit knowledge, judgment—have been used interchangeably with intuition. Intuition and creativity share common properties, and it has been suggested that intuition is a first and necessary stage of creativity,^'^ that some sort of preconscious activity guides an individual to novel ideas.^' Individuals may therefore be able to enhance creativity by recreating environments in which they have experienced intuition. Intuition has also been differentiated from tacit knowledge and implicit learning. Knowledge management focuses on leveraging the know-how and experience about customers, products, and processes within a firm.2^- Intuition is sometimes viewed as an end product of tacit knowledge,^^ which is embodied in cognitive processes and implicitly learned through experience. Tacit knowledge is uniquely personal and complex.3" For example, skilled craftsmen develop a wealth of readily-available expertise, with basic building blocks that are etched and entrenched in their minds and do not require conscious thought to analyze.3^ Our present study also suggests that judgment is not regarded in the literature as encompassing an emotional element, but an affective component is often attached to the intuition construct. (See Table Acknowledgments The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Management Association (NMA), its president, Stephen K. Bailey, along with Karen Tobias and all of the NMA staff members. We also thank the University of Dayton for funding the project, as well as Lisa Cheraskin, Gordon Dehler, and William Lewis for providing feedback on earlier versions of our manuscript. Endnotes ' For a review, see Agor, W. H. 1989, Intuition in organizations: Leading and managing productively. Newbury Park: Sage. For a discussion of how intuition has been measured using the MBTI, see Zemke, R. 1992. Second thoughts about the MBTl. Training. 29:43-47; Schweiger, D. M. 1985. Measuring managerial cognitive styles: On the logical validity of the
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Taking the mystery out of intuitive decision making

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