Extraordinary Vocabulary, Word #3: Intuition

"The emotional tail wags the rational dog." ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ― Jonathan Haidt, American Psychologist

This is how the story goes: The CMO laughed. The intern laughed. The security guard laughed. The CEO’s spouse laughed. The CEO’s children laughed. The Uber driver laughed. The butcher laughed. Then someone said ‘Okay, now let’s do some research to see if it’s funny’”.

You can argue that the target audience wasn’t represented among all those characters in the story above. Always a fair argument. But you can also consider the following: Marketing avoids intuitive decision making. In our smartly wired brains, Intuition often means lack of strategic rigor, wishful thinking, pure creative fluff. And after all, with so much access to data, why would we even need it???

Here’s why.

Do you ever get butterflies on your stomach? Such gut feeling is our emotional reflex to the world around us. It’s known as the most genuine way to respond to our surroundings. Even in popular culture we have expressions that translate this first screening, such as “first impressions last” and “love at first sight”.

According to Kahneman, an American psychologist who coined the System1 / System2 theory, we make our decisions based on two main processes, and in this particular order: first, the System 1 reacts. It’s the brain’s fast, automatic, intuitive reaction. Then, System 2 takes over. It’s the mind’s slower, analytical mode, where reason dominates. Intuition, first. Reason, second.

The human brain has billions of nerve cells, while the human gut has “only” a fraction of it: 100 million. However, it’s common knowledge that we can only use 10% of our brains, while we can use 100% of our gut. And although serotonin is known as a brain neurotransmitter, it is estimated that 90 percent of the body's serotonin is actually in the gut. So it doesn’t come as a surprise that the scientific community refers to the gut as our “Second Brain”.?

Perhaps that’s why through the evolution of our species as Homo Sapiens, only those who could listen to their guts would survive. In this Harvard Business Review article, such survivalism is said to result in the reproduction of only those who had a strong emotional radar. So if our emotional capabilities brought us here, why do we keep praising data-backed rational thought over our intuitive genius?

Rational thought requires solid foundations and concrete facts. Such formalities induce us to a certain sturdiness, where we catch ourselves pre-testing, re-grouping, re-aligning... We overvalue overthinking. As we learned how to master our rational thoughts, we may have distanced ourselves from our emotional core.?

In order to create a more intuitive, uninhibited workplace, we must stop overthinking, and start embracing the immense power of our collective gut feeling. If one’s emotional screening of the world carries so much truth, imagine all that our shared intuition can achieve. Data informs us, inspires us, supports us. But data is nothing without gut.

There are two main ways to come up with ideas: start with data, execute with guts; and start with a gut feeling, validate with data. The first way requires us to make an intuitive leap from a data set; the latter requires us to have an intuitive insight, first. Both ways though require us to be connected with our intuition.

Recently, a client stopped us in a presentation when we transitioned from presenting ideas straight into talking about timelines and budgets. He said: “Wait, before all that, can I share how I am feeling about these ideas first?”. That interruption pushed everyone in the meeting to connect with their intuition. It was so powerful, we ended up creating a slide we include at the end of every presentation we do at the agency. It says: “How are you feeling right now?”.

(Co-written with Carolina Bassili.)