The power of Intuition in Business

The statement ‘something told me’ comes up regularly in our daily conversations. Often times, people would say “I should have listened to the thing veering me towards that direction. That “something” is called intuition and is considered very powerful in decision making which is a continuous occurrence in the life of an entrepreneur.
Bonnie Marcus, discussed her findings in a Forbes article on intuition as an essential tool for leadership. She discovered that not all decisions are made solely through collection and analysis of data, some are made by relying on one’s gut. She went ahead to coin the word ‘infotuition’ from the combination of cognition and intuition. This is the process of using data at one’s disposal from wide range of sources available and equally listening to the voice inside their head. You’d find out as an entrepreneur that some business deals/decisions that didn’t quite sit well with you even after facts and figures proved otherwise ended up going sour.
You’d hear entrepreneurs that deal with stitches or measurements in the line of their business say ‘I had a feeling the stitch was incomplete or the measurement wasn’t correct and I was right eventually after double checking. It is important to note that problems are better solved and the best decisions are made with the combination of that gut feeling and data/information collected and analyzed. Dr. Martin Robson (Ph. D.) a Senior Business and Management Tutor at the New Zealand Institute of Education said ‘solutions do not come to us out of the blue. We won’t get the intuition unless we have put in the effort – read the literature, done the research , put in the hard yards, and then given the intuitive mind a chance to process the information’
You can maximize your intuitive abilities as an entrepreneur by:
-Recognizing and trusting the ability of your brain and mind to have the best possible solutions.
-Paying attention to those feelings and acting on them with the inclusion of brain storming, research, data collection and analysis.
-Monitoring and analyzing results gotten from the two practices above for future decision making.