INTEGRATING REASON AND INTUITION

According to an ancient Sufi story, a blind man wandering lost in a forest tripped and fell. As the blind man rummaged about the forest floor he discovered that he had fallen over a cripple. The blind man and the cripple struck up a conversation, commiserating on their fate. The blind man said, “I have been wandering in this forest for as long as I can remember, and I cannot see to find my way out.” The cripple said, “I have been lying on the forest floor for as long as I can remember, and I cannot get up to walk out.” As they sat there talking, suddenly the cripple cried out. “I’ve got it,” he said. “You hoist me up onto your shoulders and I will tell you where to walk. Together we can find our way out of the forest.” According to the ancient storyteller, the blind man symbolized rationality. The cripple symbolized intuition. We will not find our way out of the forest until we learn how to integrate the two.

Intuition in management has recently received increasing attention and acceptance, after many decades of being officially ignored. Now numerous studies show that experienced managers and leaders rely heavily on intuition—that they do not figure out complex problems entirely rationally. They rely on hunches, recognize patterns, and draw intuitive analogies and parallels to other seemingly disparate situations.19 There are even courses in management schools on intuition and creative problem solving. But we have a very long way to go, in our organizations and in society, toward reintegrating intuition and rationality.

Copied: The fifth Discipline: Peter F Senege