Kickstart Your Gut Instinct: A Practical Guide

There are two fundamental truths every business leader knows: We will never have 100% of the data and decisions will need to be made urgently. Despite years of running a business, there are always questions that arise: Will this be right for my business or not? Where should I find more data?  How can I do this better?

Often, we only have our gut instinct to rely on.

While there are many ‘how to guides’ available, featuring time-tested principles and models on decision-making, here are 5 practical tips that could help trigger that elusive deciding-engine – your own gut instinct.

1 ) Hold the crystal ball – Predict The Results

Write a small e-mail to yourself, predicting the results of any field test or research you’re planning to undertake. After analysing results, contrast the accuracy of your prediction with the actual data. Then, diagnose why the results are different. Systematically, predicting and learning from our predictions will slowly get you to a higher level of business understanding, also developing your gut instinct.

 Smart tip: You'll start achieving higher levels of accuracy. This is when you can start broadcasting your predictions, and accelerating how fast you respond to a situation. You will also see a drop in research spending. It will dramatically increase the confidence your business teams have in you.

 2) Forget case studies, be a storyteller

Businesses are a continuous and fertile data source on decisions and their corresponding outcomes. Capture case studies in a folder concisely, written in the format of a small story. This is an extremely powerful way of memorizing a business case study, and having it ready at your fingertips at a moment's notice. This is also a powerful way of developing internal insights which are replicable in many future situations. 

 3) Learn from many places

There is no substitute for ‘walking with the consumers’. The more you spend your ‘physical time’ (away from office meetings and data analysis) in understanding their behaviour and preferences, the more your instinct will increase. To complement your learning, use every spare minute to read books and articles on marketing and analysis of case studies.

Your goal should be to learn about your business from a fundamentals-first perspective, while understanding how other businesses have dealt with similar situations. You will be able to access the knowledge and insights that companies spent millions and decades to acquire. Keep testing yourself for the new knowledge and insights you have acquired - they are useless if they don't challenge how you approach and solve problems. The advantage of self-learning lies in its flexibility; create a 'cheat sheet', a flow-chart, a memory technique - use whatever works to retain this valuable knowledge.

4) Take pride in being an architect

For a business leader, knowledge without practical application is just theoretical - you might as well read a novel. Everything you learn on a day-to-day business must be the part of the larger puzzle and process. Every time you learn something, try to build it into the larger framework.

Essential ‘big picture questions’ include:

• How does the consumer think and makes choices?
• What is the business model?
• How can we increase shareholder value and profitability?
• Are the fundamentals of the business, including pricing strategy, deciding the amount of premium that is sustainable, viable? 
• All this comes from asking many 'Why's', and triggering the desire towards answers.

Pause to see the big picture - what is the consumer and business model trying to tell you?

5) Listen to your inner signals

Be in touch with your inner voice, and find patterns in what you experience internally, when you feel your decision is right or wrong. It will help you gauge and classify a decision in terms of feeling 'comfortable' with where a decision is going, vs. feeling 'so-so', or feeling uncomfortable. Closely examining the reasons for these feelings over time will also give you insights on what aspects of the decision makes you feel in a certain way. This skill is very useful in taking people decisions as well.

Over time, applying some, or all of these tips will give you a business sixth sense, a powerful asset about which most are unaware. You will need this ability, in today’s ever-changing volatile business dynamic that demands instant decision-making.

 This list is neither exhaustive nor complete, and it would be great if you can add more based on your experience. Look forward to hearing from you.