By Arupa Tesolin, Copyright December 7, 2004 Have we reached the end of the road to intellectual elitism and created overly complex systems in business? Could be. It might be time to give intuitive aptitudes a pathway to create better results. Here’s why.
More effort and time than ever before is spent in organizations nowadays “serving” information systems and knowledge processes. While sales and customer service processes do incrementally benefit from these, it is unlikely that the critical mass of business results is their direct outcome.
Massive change, massive speed, and massive market shifts have an inverse relationship with human capital. They wear people out and cause stress and upheaval. More energy goes into feeding the system than to tangible and valued outcomes.
Businesses have to stop doing everything under the sun as prescribed by the latest system innovation and become more intuitive. We’ve become one big thinking machine, a clunky one at that. So clunky that some of the most important small feedbacks don’t connect with the front end of the process. For these small feedbacks, customers can turn around and walk away without bothering to tell you the reason why. A million small thoughts and small reasons not articulated could devastate your business well before your sophisticated systems will show you that it’s already happened or why.
The great minds of business need to stop for a moment and for once not think, but sense. They must become more intuitive as an organization. This means to get back to what matters, to simplify and focus on the few things that really define their business, their service and their product. It also means to start building in intuitive feedback processes and intuitive skill sets in their employees, getting back to what makes people smart and machines dumb.
While intuition is becoming recognized as a cognitive skill set, it's defined business linkages are still evolving. That’s okay really. Like any other truly novel development, it’s greatest advantages won’t become apparent until later. Take the internet for instance. Aside from the obvious business uses and continuing adaptation over the years, it’s truly magnificent purpose in the world is social. And this still in infancy while we navigate through the experimenting and speculating stage.
Three significant areas stand out where intuition can have a direct, relevant and potentially powerful leveraging effect. These are Business Intelligence Processes, People/Performance and Innovation. So, here are some things to think about, excuse me, I mean feel and do.
Business Intelligence Processes The past several years of adaptive technology integration has equipped most businesses with the capacity to acquire competitive, market and other business intelligence in expedient ways. Increasingly technology has also brought powerful opportunities to connect information with people, tap into knowledge and network reservoirs and introduce new processes for collaborative communication. What it does well is bring predictive modeling into effect with limitations. Although accurate, virtually all interpretation is based on data and trend indicators that existed in the past. While the capability to blend predictive systems can lead to new knowledge convergences, none has accounted for the "surprise" factor, emotional marketplace issues, or anticipating unexpected trends and opportunities. This is where intuition can potentially provide it’s most beneficial and valid supplementary data stream.
What you can do:
Include intuitive information as a valid feedback loop in business intelligence. As a preliminary step the executive management group show leadership in validating the business reasons for including intuitive feedback.
Next develop a process to collect intuitive data that links to business feedback systems to answer the kinds of market and other information that other feedback systems typically answer and some new ones. Learning, marketing and organizational specialists can help define this. Include identifying people and business areas that can collectively provide the best field sense data. This will likely to extend beyond the business analysts as an interdisciplinary group.
Then develop a valid information structure or reporting team to focus the feedback such as a facilitated team feedback session with key reporting areas that are predefined. Then provide training for the group that will be involved in the intuitive information collection process in intuitive sensing.
Keep the actual process quite relaxed and distinct from other work to build experience and confidence in intuitive methods. A quiet space or green-space distinct from the noise and buzz of the day-to-day business environment will be best.
People and Performance While technology advances have increased organizational productivity, the next business cycle, tempered by globalization, will focus on organizations becoming more capable through people. This will require significant and wise investment in human capital as the value asset of a corporation. Training to extend cognitive capability and engage commitment through a meaningful compelling vision will directly influence an organization’s mastery in managed outcomes. Minimizing human waste through stress and unproductive work environments will be paramount.
Intuition is a strong personal factor in emotional intelligence. Someone whose intuition antennae are "on" can identify early warning signs in relationships and projects that can translate into difficulty later on. An intuitively capable individual brings added value through providing opportunities to validate his or her subjective perceptions with questions, the answers to which can provide the communication and trust basis needed to understand and address issues with others.
A welcoming environment for intuitive capability includes a basis in honesty, mutual respect and transparent motivation, all the attributes needed for a positive workplace. Organizations with negative politics or dysfunctional management are not good candidates.
Intuition has a role in solving problems, making decisions, and leveraging wisdom to produce results that stand. Actively intuitive people are more likely to be engaged and committed to your business because they are more wholly involved.
What you can do:
Define intuition and intuitive intelligence as a personal cognitive skill or collective competency. Define what you mean by intuition and practicing intuitive intelligence. Is it getting results without thinking? Giving feedback based on feelings? Reflecting on your “sense” of the market” beyond what the facts indicate? What should intuitive people be able to do? What should you be able to do as an organization? Just because intuition in a sense is “loosey-goosey”, it doesn’t mean you leave the anticipated outcomes up to chance. You may get unexpected information by chance. But specifying the kinds of advantages you expect to get from a more intuitive workforce should be pre-determined, with room for surprises, which can be built into the expectations later. Intuition needs this kind of serious backing in an organization if indeed it is expected to be used and respected.
Define performance areas and expected results where generated outcomes that can be linked to intuitive capability, such as performance, anticipatory problem-solving, opportunities to build relationships, improve performance or operational efficiencies.
Be ready to anticipate the kinds workforce cultural changes that may evolve and the importance of open communication, trust and respect. If you need to work on these issues first then be aware of them. Whether we are talking about personal intuition or business intuition, remember that the source of the intuition is the same, a person, a human being first, business associate second.
Provide intuition development training to your staff that can include meditation, yoga or other self-awareness practices as well as cognitive intuition exercises and simulations. Keep it light-hearted, upbeat and fun. Remember you are not replacing all your fact-based business information with intuitive information, rather you are adding intuition to the mix. Your number one goal is in developing confidence. Actual best learning practices and results will evolve later. Expect to be experimental in the beginning.
Help establish linkages in intuitive problem-solving by publishing relevant business cases where perception and outcome are directly related to a tangible business result.
Innovation Intuition, imagination and the creative process are closely aligned. Imagination is a starting point for new products and evolutions in service and cycle time. Intuition is a feedback mechanism that can help identify improvement areas, potential risks and timing issues. All play an important role in innovation. Innovation begins with strategy, a clearly defined business goal that includes specific innovation outcomes in real terms. After this an organizational commitment to turn people into innovators and make best use of their creative and intuitive skills needs to be backed up with a training plan to develop and monitor skills transfer into relevant results.
What you can do:
Define the role of innovation in your business. Include intuition and intuitive intelligence as a personal cognitive skill or collective competency for innovation with clearly defined links to innovation goals and other constituent innovation skills. Define how intuition fits into the spectrum of innovation skills.
Identify the strategic points in the business process that offer the highest capacity for contribution to the innovation process and the specific innovation outcomes expected at each phase. Also include the business impact of potential outcomes beyond these.
Define training areas for skill development for all staff involved in the innovation process - including imagination, creative thinking skills and intuitive cognition, as well as applied innovation training to transfer ideas into tactical outcomes. Include a defined communication plan and innovation leadership responsibilities of champions, teams and others.
Building a More Intuitive Organization - To learn more about this author, visit Arupa Tesolin's Website.
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