What do you do if your gut instincts are leading you astray in strategic decision-making?

While trusting your gut is important, data-driven leadership is the key to unlocking organizational success. When faced with conflicting intuition and data, embrace the power of empirical evidence to make informed decisions that drive results. -Data-driven decision making: Empowering your team with insights and clarity. -A culture of trust: Building confidence through transparency and accountability. -Informed risk-taking: Navigating uncertainty with confidence. -Continuous improvement: Learning from data to optimize performance. -Superior outcomes: Achieving measurable results and sustained growth. By embracing data-driven leadership, you can transform your organization into a high-performing, agile, and resilient force.

If gut instincts are proving unreliable in strategic decision-making, rely more on data-driven analysis and objective evaluation. Incorporate diverse perspectives and expertise to mitigate biases. Implement decision-making frameworks or seek advice from trusted mentors to ensure a more informed and rational approach to strategic choices.

As a CEO, when my gut instincts seem off-course in strategic decision-making, I rely on a data-driven approach. I gather relevant information, analyze trends, and consult with experts. I also delegate effectively, recognizing that success is a collective effort. Diverse perspectives are crucial; I encourage open dialogue among my team. Scenario planning helps anticipate outcomes. If needed, I pivot based on evidence. Humility is key—I acknowledge when instincts mislead and adapt. Ultimately, it’s about balancing intuition with evidence to make informed choices.

Trusting your instincts is crucial, but complementing them with data ensures a balanced approach. Instincts guide us based on experience, while data offers objective insight, combining both leads to informed and authentic decisions.

Data. If you have 90% certainty via data, use your instincts for the remaining 10%, but with the amount of information we have today, it is no longer possible to use guesswork to make decisions!!

Considering different perspectives in addittion to trusting on data and on your gut instinct should be an important part of your decision making process. Strategic thinking and decision is totally related to evaluate scenarios, test hypothesis and evaluate risks. To involve more people that can enrich this process and be able to be open to change your mindset is crutial to strategic sucesss and to share your leadership vision to your team in order to engage them.

It's always good to get input before making strategic decisions. I'll reach out to trusted coworkers or mentors and run my thoughts by them. It's important that you tell them what your decision is, what alternatives you considered and how you came to that decision. You can't just get their opinion on what to do. A good read is Blink by Malcolm Gladwell that dives into "gut feelings" and when you should/shouldn't trust them.

Frontline employees often have direct insights into the day-to-day operations and customer interactions. Organize regular feedback sessions to gather their observations and suggestions. Form cross-functional teams to work on strategic initiatives or decision-making processes. The diverse skill sets and perspectives can lead to more innovative and well-rounded decisions.

Incorporating diverse insights not only enriches your decision-making process but also promotes a culture of inclusivity and respect for varied perspectives. This method strengthens leadership by fostering a holistic understanding of issues and encourages innovative solutions.

Most of us are susceptible to all kinds of biases. And whilst we should regard our gut (because our subconscious brain is actually more powerful than our conscious one and may assess things more accurately) we shoudl not do so blindly. One tool I have found useful is the Kepner-Traegoe decision matrix. Google it for details as there is not room to explain fully here. What is important though is that I don't use it quite how it's intended. It should help us to reach a logical rational conclusion. But I often find I disagee with it. I've learnt that doesn't mean I'm wrong. But it does mean I'm decieving myself somehow. So when that happens I revisit my logical rational analysis and try to work out why I really think as I do!

That is very important, make sure you're not biased. Try to reflect based on facts, not just feelings. Sometimes you're own emotional triggers are in the way.

Reflect honestly is a huge piece of the puzzle. Do it before you dive into the data. Why? Because if you find yourself following your instinct more than the data, you may perceive the data in a different way. Often, you don't realize that you aren't actually following our instinct, but are following your fear. Having a clear understanding of this, before diving into the data, will open you up to seeing opportunities in the data that you wouldn't have seen before.

Systematically review your recent strategic decisions, especially those that didn't yield the expected outcomes. Assess the rationale, the process, and the information used at the time of these decisions. Ask for feedback from trusted colleagues, mentors, or advisors on your decision-making process. Encourage them to be candid about their perceptions of where and why your instincts might have led you astray.

Incorporating self-reflection enables leaders to identify and overcome personal biases, leading to more balanced and effective decision-making.

As a former product manager, I can't tell you how many times I wanted to go out and do more testing. Digging deeper into what we believed to be true. And more often than not we weren't given the chance to do it. Yet, there is one time that sticks out to me. Our team had been asked by a client to do a custom report for them. While we could have simply said yes, we decided to ask more questions and we are really glad we did. Why? Because the client was using the requested report to put into excel with a bunch of other data in order to spit out a final report. A report that we could give them straight out of the box. No customization required. By us taking the time to get curious, we ended up saving the client time and money. Be curious.

Start by explicitly identifying and listing the key assumptions underlying your strategic decisions. These could be about market trends, customer behavior, competitive dynamics, internal capabilities, etc. Then challenge those assumptions. Are they actually valid?

Incorporating data-driven insights into decision-making empowers you to navigate complex situations with confidence. By grounding your strategies in evidence, you ensure that your decisions are not just intuitive but are also backed by real-world outcomes. This enhances the likelihood of achieving your goals and fosters a culture of informed decision-making within your organization.

Cultivate an organizational culture that values agility and flexibility. Encourage teams to view change as an opportunity rather than a threat, and to be open to adjusting strategies as new information becomes available. Always adjust and iterate

Adapting to change showcases a leader's ability to prioritize success and growth over ego, ensuring decisions are always aligned with the best possible results.

It's important to step back and analyze the situation more objectively. Seek additional information, It might be helpful to rely more on data-driven analysis, seek input from trusted advisors or colleagues, and consider alternative perspectives. Sometimes, emotions or biases can cloud our judgment, so it's crucial to approach decisions with a clear and rational mindset.

Gut instincts are an important part of leadership decision-making, and these can be informed by experience. However, if these decisions are turning out to be errors of judgment, one must rely on empirical information more heavily. Instincts can be very important in certain areas e.g. hiring, which heavily relies on judging a person in an interview. In this type of situation, a leader can also rely on colleagues for assistance in the judgement; so, for example if a gut instinct is driving a leader to a hire, and their panel colleagues are against that hire, it may be sensible to go with the colleagues' judgment if gut instincts have let down the leader in the past.

Highly recommend "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. Talks about how/why we make fast, instinctive decisions vs deliberate, thought-out decisions. Also- the rule of reversible outcomes says that you should make reversible decisions as soon as possible and make irreversible decisions as late as possible. When decisions are reversible, make them fast. Your biggest risk is dragging your feet and not making a decision. The cost to acquire additional information isn't worth the effort. However, before squeezing toothpaste out of the tube, best to have a toothbrush handy.

When gut instincts conflict with strategic decision-making, integrating data analytics into your process can provide a clearer, more objective foundation. Encourage seeking diverse counsel to challenge and refine your instincts with external perspectives. Honest reflection on past decisions where instincts may have misled you is crucial for growth. Employ hypothesis testing to validate assumptions before committing to major decisions. Embracing flexibility allows you to pivot based on new information or feedback, avoiding the rigidity of relying solely on gut feelings. A commitment to continuous learning, through both successes and missteps, enriches your decision-making toolkit, blending intuition with evidence-based strategies.

This is the digital age and there's no reason (usually) that you can't do both. For example, I had to choose between two media agencies. One had proven experience and the 'right' creative talent. One was up and coming. I wanted to work with the up and coming, but that was the 'wrong' choice. We worked with both using a trial period and chose the up and coming agency based on the efforts they made to learn our business, the inputs they created and pure innovative thinking.