CHAPTER 15

When It’s Safe to Rely on Intuition (and When It’s Not)

by Connson Chou Locke

We often use mental shortcuts, or heuristics, to make decisions. There is simply too much information coming at us from all directions, and too many decisions that we need to make from moment to moment, to think every single one through a long and detailed analysis. While this can sometimes backfire, in many cases intuition is a perfectly fine shortcut. However, intuition is helpful only under certain conditions.

The most important condition is expertise. If I am a novice mountain climber, then my intuition on whether or not a given route is safe is not going to be accurate—I have no previous knowledge on which to base that decision. Similarly, if a financial history professor is making an investment decision, her expertise in financial history does not automatically extend to financial investments; thus she should not rely on intuition for those decisions.

It takes a surprising amount of domain-specific expertise to develop accurate intuitive judgments—around 10 years, according to the research. And during this time, repetition and feedback are essential. For example, a TV show producer, in order to develop accurate intuitive judgment about new television shows, would need to repeatedly engage in making decisions about new shows and receive rapid and accurate feedback on whether those choices were good ones. Eventually, this repetition and feedback become embedded as intuitive learning and can be used to make fast and effective intuitive decisions about new shows.

Learning can also happen subconsciously over time (also called “implicit learning”). For example, a factory foreman spends every day scanning the factory environment, ensuring it is safe and workers are productive. After many years of this, the foreman learns to recognize the most important signals or patterns of activity, ignoring irrelevant information. Thus, the experienced foreman can respond to conditions on the factory floor in a rapid, accurate, and intuitive way.

The second condition relates to the type of decision you’re making. To be conducive to intuitive judgment, the problem should be unstructured. An unstructured problem is one that lacks clear decision rules or has few objective criteria with which to make the decision—for example, aesthetic judgments about whether a new movie or art exhibit will be a success, political judgments regarding the best way to get a new initiative approved, or human resource judgments concerning the best way to resolve a conflict between employees.

The types of problems that do not benefit from intuition are ones that have clear decision rules, objective criteria, and abundant data with which to perform an analysis. In making a medical diagnosis, for example, computer algorithms tend to be more accurate than an experienced medical doctor’s judgment. This is because the computer can calculate the probability that a certain set of symptoms indicate a particular illness while also factoring in the patient’s age, sex, and other relevant factors. The human brain, when faced with such a large amount of data, must use heuristics, and those mental shortcuts can be imperfect. With hundreds of possible symptoms and illnesses, it would be very difficult for any individual doctor to develop the depth of expertise required to make an accurate intuitive judgment on a specific illness.

Of course, most decisions lie somewhere between the aesthetic judgment and computer algorithm. In buying a new car, you can feed data into a computer algorithm to calculate the most efficient and economical model for your needs, but the final decision will be influenced by your reaction to the look and feel of the car—something a computer cannot assess for you. Likewise, the decision to sell your product in a new market can be analyzed quantitatively, but the final outcome will be affected by the new customers’ feelings about the product—something a computer cannot predict. Nonetheless, if there are clear decision rules that can be used to create an algorithm, if relevant data are available, and if the decision will be assessed with purely objective criteria (that is, not aesthetic judgments or feelings), then an analytical approach is likely to be more helpful than intuition in reaching the best decision.

Finally, the third condition is the amount of time you have available. If you only have a small window in which to decide, intuition can be helpful because it is faster than a detailed analysis. This is especially true when there is very little information with which to make the decision. When information and time are scarce, using heuristics such as intuition can often be as effective as a rational approach. However, lack of time by itself is not necessarily a good reason to use intuition. As much as we want to believe that our intuition is telling us something meaningful, it is still a shortcut that could lead us down the wrong path.

Intuition is essentially a feeling, and we do not know the source of that feeling. It may be that our aversion to a particular option is reflecting a hidden nervousness, insecurity, or fear of the unknown. If so, then our intuition will lead us to reject a perfectly good option. At the same time, research has found that feelings are relevant—even essential—to decision making; a study of patients with a tumor in the emotion area of the brain found they could generate alternatives but were unable to choose one.

Ultimately, it may be that we should use both intuition and analysis. There may be times when intuition helps narrow down the options, which can then be evaluated in a logical and rational way. Or the reverse: An initial detailed analysis may identify a few options that seem equally good, and intuition is needed to single out the right one. But before you decide to trust your gut, ask yourself: Am I an expert? Is this an unstructured problem? And how much time do I have to choose?

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Connson Chou Locke, PhD, is a leadership researcher, teacher, consultant, and coach, specializing in leadership development, culture, and change. She is Senior Lecturer in Practice at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Locke is available for speaking and workshops. Follow her on LinkedIn and Twitter @connsonlocke.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org, April 30, 2015 (product #H021HY).