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Intuition at Work: Why Developing Your Gut Instincts Will Make You Better at What You Do
At times in our careers, we've all been aware of a "gut feeling" guiding our decisions. Too often, we dismiss these feelings as "hunches" and therefore untrustworthy. But renowned researcher Gary Klein reveals that, in fact, 90 percent of the critical decisions we make is based on our intuition. In his new book, INTUITION AT WORK , Klein shows that intuition, far from being an innate "sixth sense," is a learnable--and essential--skill.
Based on interviews with senior executives who make important judgments swiftly, as well as firefighters, emergency medical staff, soldiers, and others who often face decisions with immediate life-and-death implications, Klein demonstrates that the expertise to recognize patterns and other cues that enable us--intuitively--to make the right decisions--is a natural extension of experience.
Through a three-tiered process called the "Exceleration Program," Klein provides readers with the tools they need to build the intuitive skills that will help them make tough choices, spot potential problems, manage uncertainty, and size up situations quickly. Klein also shows how to communicate such decisions more effectively, coach others in the art of intuition, and recognize and defend against an overdependence on information technology.
The first book to demystify the role of intuition in decision making, INTUITION AT WORK is essential reading for those who wish to develop their intuition skills, wherever they are in the organizational hierarchy.
Based on interviews with senior executives who make important judgments swiftly, as well as firefighters, emergency medical staff, soldiers, and others who often face decisions with immediate life-and-death implications, Klein demonstrates that the expertise to recognize patterns and other cues that enable us--intuitively--to make the right decisions--is a natural extension of experience.
Through a three-tiered process called the "Exceleration Program," Klein provides readers with the tools they need to build the intuitive skills that will help them make tough choices, spot potential problems, manage uncertainty, and size up situations quickly. Klein also shows how to communicate such decisions more effectively, coach others in the art of intuition, and recognize and defend against an overdependence on information technology.
The first book to demystify the role of intuition in decision making, INTUITION AT WORK is essential reading for those who wish to develop their intuition skills, wherever they are in the organizational hierarchy.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published December 24, 2002
82 people are currently reading
3038 people want to read
About the author
Gary Klein
43 books213 followersGary Klein, Ph.D., is known for the cognitive models, such as the Recognition-Primed Decision (RPD) model, the Data/Frame model of sensemaking, the Management By Discovery model of planning in complex settings, and the Triple Path model of insight, the methods he developed, including techniques for Cognitive Task Analysis, the PreMortem method of risk assessment, and the ShadowBox training approach, and the movement he helped to found in 1989 — Naturalistic Decision Making. The company he started in 1978, Klein Associates, grew to 37 employees by the time he sold it in 2005. He formed his new company, ShadowBox LLC, in 2014 and is the author of five books.
The Lightbulb Moment: Insights are unexpected shifts in the way we understand how something works, and how to make it work better. The talk examines two mysteries. First, where do insights come from? This talk presents a new account of the nature of insights. Second, how can we trigger more insights? This talk describes a strategy for adopting an insight mindset.
The Lightbulb Moment: Insights are unexpected shifts in the way we understand how something works, and how to make it work better. The talk examines two mysteries. First, where do insights come from? This talk presents a new account of the nature of insights. Second, how can we trigger more insights? This talk describes a strategy for adopting an insight mindset.
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January 12, 2010
Background
The buzz around Blink by Malcolm Gladwell is now long gone, left in the dust of his following books, Outliers and What the Dog Saw. You may remember it made a splash by suggesting that intuitive decision-making could rival more structured methods. Numerous critiques of Gladwell’s writing and referencing rigour were made, but the core of the book referred to serious work by the researcher Gary Klein.
Klein’s first book Sources of Power documents his work with fire fighters and other professionals to discover the roots of their ability to make good decisions under split-second pressure. Klein’s latest book “Streetlights and Shadows” was published in 2009 and will be reviewed here later on. In between these he wrote The Power of Intuition as a practical guide to help people improve their own intuitive decision making – which seems like the most useful place to start with his work.
Intuitive Decision Making
Klein introduces the book with a bit of history. He began his research in the decision-making field looking at fire fighters using the existing frameworks, which emphasised analytical methods for judgement and decision-making. However, he found that analytic methods could not explain how successful fire officers made their decisions. He came to the conclusion that traditional analytics were not always practical and that intuitive decision-making must be explored.
Klein isn’t a zealot, he begins the first chapter with the statement: “We shouldn’t simply follow our intuitions, as they can be unreliable and need to be monitored. Yet we shouldn’t suppress our intuitions either, because they are essential to our decision making and can’t be replaced by analyses or procedures.” Thus, he says, our only option is to work on improving our intuitions so that when we need them, they are more accurate.
Klein defines intuition as “the way we translate our experience into action.” It is obvious that we can transfer parts of our experience into analytic forms, but he makes the case that we rarely have the resources to do this for more than a small part of our experience. This, Klein notes, partly explains why studies show that replacing intuitive decision making with analytics rarely creates the improvement that many would expect.
Improving our Intuitions
If we cannot replace analysis (though he believes analysis can supplement intuition) Klein suggest that our only choice is to improve the quality of our intuitions. Klein divides his book into three sections to help us achieve it:
Section I – Intuition: Ways to Build It (Chapters 2-5) – concentrates on understanding what intuition is, building it and finding ways to blend it with analysis.
Section II – Intuition: Ways to Apply It (Chapters 6-12) – looks at applying intuition in the workplace, tools for using intuition in spotting problems, managing uncertainty, inventing new approaches, etc.
Section III – Intuition: Ways to Safeguard It (Chapters 13-17) – how to communicate intuitive decisions to others, how to make good use of metrics and quantitative data and how to avoid overuse of computer-based technologies that implicitly place analytical methods above intuitive decision-making.
Section 1
This section begins in Chapter 2 with a story that Gladwell repeated in Blink, about nurses in a neo-natal intensive care unit that powerfully illustrates the relationship between experience and intuition and (naturally enough, given the setting) highlights just how critical developing intuition can be.
Chapter 3 lays out the pattern-recognition process behind intuitive decision-making and mentions that analysis can in particular support the process of recognizing cues. To the charge that “Of course – isn’t that obvious? People use their experience to recognize what to do” Klein highlights that formal decision analysis is still held up as the ideal in most business and engineering schools. He also introduces the detail that Mental Simulation, using mental models, is a key element of turning experience into intuitive decisions. Klein documents that developing good mental models is key, but often neglected in the modern workplace.
Chapter 4 gets into the meat of improving one’s own intuition, using the schema that Klein uses in training engagements with organizations around the world. Perhaps ironically, it is quite an analytical process: a feedback cycle between 3 elements: Identify and Understand the Decision Requirements of Your Job; Practice the Difficult Decisions in Context; Review Your Decision-making Experiences.
Chapter 5 take on the question of using analysis to support intuitive decision-making. Klein candidly explains the limits of intuition, but warns against the overreaction he sees around the world which rejects intuition out of hand – for analysis too has drawbacks, as he explains. For Klein, the main benefit of analysis is to explore the issues at stake and discover more of what to take into account before making a decision.
Section 2
Section 2 begins in Chapter 6, a short chapter, which makes the case that intuition has a strong role with tough choices, especially where analysis doesn’t create options with much distinction. (Klein calls this the Zone of Indifference.)
Chapter 7 opens with another of the decision-making exercises peppered throughout the book. Like the rest it is a thought provoking case and if you follow through on all of them it feels like it will change the way your choices are made. This particular exercise is an example of The PreMortem Exercise, which Klein provides as a useful one to spot potential problems, alongside some information from research about the Problem Detection Process. He identifies Expertise, Stance and Organisational Barriers as key starting factors in that process.
Managing Uncertainty is the theme of Chapter 8 and key to Klein’s case that we need to move beyond mechanical analysis. In daily business decisions, many factors are unknown, or too expensive to measure closely. Fortunately, Klein’s work with the US Marine Corps have focused extensively on uncertainty which helped him identify the 3 areas of uncertainty which intuition can help with most: the source of the uncertainty, the tactics available for handling the uncertainty and the decision maker’s personal tolerance for ambiguity. He then outlines a healthy number of tactics for dealing with each factor.
Storybuilding as the basis for sensemaking is the centre of Chapter 9, complemented by an exercise designed to highlight how signals are present in every situation, but easily missed. Stories allow several possible patterns to be examined and tested for the presence of further signals. The downsides of sensemaking are mentioned, particularly the capacity of the human mind to fit incoming signals to an existing model. Klein assembles some techniques to make sure that you re not becoming fixated on an interpretation of events that does not fit reality.
This leads naturally to Chapters 10 and 11 which focus on Creativity and Improvising/Adapting Plans – critical components of bringing intuition into workplaces which contain many existing plans, procedures and ways of thinking – any of which can be an obstacle to perceiving the signals that indicate change in an ambiguous situation. Chapter 12 rounds out Section 2 with a case study that helps the reader envision what the use of intuition in the workplace looks like.
Section 3
How to communicate your intuitions is the heading for Chapter 13, possibly the most important part of the whole book. After all, one of the greatest values of analytical decision making is that it’s very easy to gain support for your results if the audience trusts your decision-making method. To this end, Klein formulates Karl Weick’s “script for giving directions” into an acronym, STICC: situation, task, intent, concerns, calibration. This formula helps separate the intent (reason for action – intended goal) from the description of the action (task) and description of events (situation). This aids in marshalling both intuitive and analytic reasoning in persuading someone to undertake a course of events.
However, overall, as the most important chapter I think Chapter 13 does not in the end solve the problem, indeed there’s a sense in which it just avoids the problem, suggesting that if you can’t communicate your intuition successfully then perhaps you should turn to Chapter 14 and consider how to coach others in being more intuitive?
Chapter 15 considers the problems that metrics can cause. Metrics remain essential because intuitions can be misleading – as we’ve seen earlier the methods for improving intuition rather depend on analytic reflection processes. Klein outlines a whole host of areas where metrics can be useful, including setting goals, “tripwires” to warn of changes, spotting trends, ensuring compliance and making comparisons. However, he warns that metrics can often result in a “loss of history” where decisions are guided by a snapshot disconnected from context. He suggests that stories are a good way to synthesise metrics an intuition into a persuasive and useful whole.
Chapter 16 continues in a “warning” vein, addressing how reliance on analytic technologies can make us less intuitive and less successful as decision makers. The first potential problem is that the information technology system may make it hard for us to find the information needed for the problem at hand. This is something we’ve all struggled with when dealing with a poorly designed IT system, but Klein warns that the greatest danger is where the design of the system throws out anomalies automatically. In this case we may never see the information that may intuitively warned us of problems to come – he calls this disabling the expertise of the skilled. The second issue is that the mediation of data by the system can slow the process of people developing the experience and expertise that would allow them to make useful intuitive decisions. Finally, it can teach dysfunctional skills – reliance on features of the technology that fail in unexpected ways.
Summary
Chapter 17 closes the book with a top ten tips for harnessing your intuition, some answers to frequently asked questions and a plea to the reader not to see the book (despite the defensive tone) as exalting intuition in every situation. Overall, I’d definitely recommend this book to anyone whose work or life involves decisions that are “not just routine.” Intuition isn’t everything, it needs to be carefully blended with analytic processes, but it’s clear to me that every day we take decisions on things that analysis cannot decide for us – because we live inside complex systems where immutable facts are often scarce on the ground.
The buzz around Blink by Malcolm Gladwell is now long gone, left in the dust of his following books, Outliers and What the Dog Saw. You may remember it made a splash by suggesting that intuitive decision-making could rival more structured methods. Numerous critiques of Gladwell’s writing and referencing rigour were made, but the core of the book referred to serious work by the researcher Gary Klein.
Klein’s first book Sources of Power documents his work with fire fighters and other professionals to discover the roots of their ability to make good decisions under split-second pressure. Klein’s latest book “Streetlights and Shadows” was published in 2009 and will be reviewed here later on. In between these he wrote The Power of Intuition as a practical guide to help people improve their own intuitive decision making – which seems like the most useful place to start with his work.
Intuitive Decision Making
Klein introduces the book with a bit of history. He began his research in the decision-making field looking at fire fighters using the existing frameworks, which emphasised analytical methods for judgement and decision-making. However, he found that analytic methods could not explain how successful fire officers made their decisions. He came to the conclusion that traditional analytics were not always practical and that intuitive decision-making must be explored.
Klein isn’t a zealot, he begins the first chapter with the statement: “We shouldn’t simply follow our intuitions, as they can be unreliable and need to be monitored. Yet we shouldn’t suppress our intuitions either, because they are essential to our decision making and can’t be replaced by analyses or procedures.” Thus, he says, our only option is to work on improving our intuitions so that when we need them, they are more accurate.
Klein defines intuition as “the way we translate our experience into action.” It is obvious that we can transfer parts of our experience into analytic forms, but he makes the case that we rarely have the resources to do this for more than a small part of our experience. This, Klein notes, partly explains why studies show that replacing intuitive decision making with analytics rarely creates the improvement that many would expect.
Improving our Intuitions
If we cannot replace analysis (though he believes analysis can supplement intuition) Klein suggest that our only choice is to improve the quality of our intuitions. Klein divides his book into three sections to help us achieve it:
Section I – Intuition: Ways to Build It (Chapters 2-5) – concentrates on understanding what intuition is, building it and finding ways to blend it with analysis.
Section II – Intuition: Ways to Apply It (Chapters 6-12) – looks at applying intuition in the workplace, tools for using intuition in spotting problems, managing uncertainty, inventing new approaches, etc.
Section III – Intuition: Ways to Safeguard It (Chapters 13-17) – how to communicate intuitive decisions to others, how to make good use of metrics and quantitative data and how to avoid overuse of computer-based technologies that implicitly place analytical methods above intuitive decision-making.
Section 1
This section begins in Chapter 2 with a story that Gladwell repeated in Blink, about nurses in a neo-natal intensive care unit that powerfully illustrates the relationship between experience and intuition and (naturally enough, given the setting) highlights just how critical developing intuition can be.
Chapter 3 lays out the pattern-recognition process behind intuitive decision-making and mentions that analysis can in particular support the process of recognizing cues. To the charge that “Of course – isn’t that obvious? People use their experience to recognize what to do” Klein highlights that formal decision analysis is still held up as the ideal in most business and engineering schools. He also introduces the detail that Mental Simulation, using mental models, is a key element of turning experience into intuitive decisions. Klein documents that developing good mental models is key, but often neglected in the modern workplace.
Chapter 4 gets into the meat of improving one’s own intuition, using the schema that Klein uses in training engagements with organizations around the world. Perhaps ironically, it is quite an analytical process: a feedback cycle between 3 elements: Identify and Understand the Decision Requirements of Your Job; Practice the Difficult Decisions in Context; Review Your Decision-making Experiences.
Chapter 5 take on the question of using analysis to support intuitive decision-making. Klein candidly explains the limits of intuition, but warns against the overreaction he sees around the world which rejects intuition out of hand – for analysis too has drawbacks, as he explains. For Klein, the main benefit of analysis is to explore the issues at stake and discover more of what to take into account before making a decision.
Section 2
Section 2 begins in Chapter 6, a short chapter, which makes the case that intuition has a strong role with tough choices, especially where analysis doesn’t create options with much distinction. (Klein calls this the Zone of Indifference.)
Chapter 7 opens with another of the decision-making exercises peppered throughout the book. Like the rest it is a thought provoking case and if you follow through on all of them it feels like it will change the way your choices are made. This particular exercise is an example of The PreMortem Exercise, which Klein provides as a useful one to spot potential problems, alongside some information from research about the Problem Detection Process. He identifies Expertise, Stance and Organisational Barriers as key starting factors in that process.
Managing Uncertainty is the theme of Chapter 8 and key to Klein’s case that we need to move beyond mechanical analysis. In daily business decisions, many factors are unknown, or too expensive to measure closely. Fortunately, Klein’s work with the US Marine Corps have focused extensively on uncertainty which helped him identify the 3 areas of uncertainty which intuition can help with most: the source of the uncertainty, the tactics available for handling the uncertainty and the decision maker’s personal tolerance for ambiguity. He then outlines a healthy number of tactics for dealing with each factor.
Storybuilding as the basis for sensemaking is the centre of Chapter 9, complemented by an exercise designed to highlight how signals are present in every situation, but easily missed. Stories allow several possible patterns to be examined and tested for the presence of further signals. The downsides of sensemaking are mentioned, particularly the capacity of the human mind to fit incoming signals to an existing model. Klein assembles some techniques to make sure that you re not becoming fixated on an interpretation of events that does not fit reality.
This leads naturally to Chapters 10 and 11 which focus on Creativity and Improvising/Adapting Plans – critical components of bringing intuition into workplaces which contain many existing plans, procedures and ways of thinking – any of which can be an obstacle to perceiving the signals that indicate change in an ambiguous situation. Chapter 12 rounds out Section 2 with a case study that helps the reader envision what the use of intuition in the workplace looks like.
Section 3
How to communicate your intuitions is the heading for Chapter 13, possibly the most important part of the whole book. After all, one of the greatest values of analytical decision making is that it’s very easy to gain support for your results if the audience trusts your decision-making method. To this end, Klein formulates Karl Weick’s “script for giving directions” into an acronym, STICC: situation, task, intent, concerns, calibration. This formula helps separate the intent (reason for action – intended goal) from the description of the action (task) and description of events (situation). This aids in marshalling both intuitive and analytic reasoning in persuading someone to undertake a course of events.
However, overall, as the most important chapter I think Chapter 13 does not in the end solve the problem, indeed there’s a sense in which it just avoids the problem, suggesting that if you can’t communicate your intuition successfully then perhaps you should turn to Chapter 14 and consider how to coach others in being more intuitive?
Chapter 15 considers the problems that metrics can cause. Metrics remain essential because intuitions can be misleading – as we’ve seen earlier the methods for improving intuition rather depend on analytic reflection processes. Klein outlines a whole host of areas where metrics can be useful, including setting goals, “tripwires” to warn of changes, spotting trends, ensuring compliance and making comparisons. However, he warns that metrics can often result in a “loss of history” where decisions are guided by a snapshot disconnected from context. He suggests that stories are a good way to synthesise metrics an intuition into a persuasive and useful whole.
Chapter 16 continues in a “warning” vein, addressing how reliance on analytic technologies can make us less intuitive and less successful as decision makers. The first potential problem is that the information technology system may make it hard for us to find the information needed for the problem at hand. This is something we’ve all struggled with when dealing with a poorly designed IT system, but Klein warns that the greatest danger is where the design of the system throws out anomalies automatically. In this case we may never see the information that may intuitively warned us of problems to come – he calls this disabling the expertise of the skilled. The second issue is that the mediation of data by the system can slow the process of people developing the experience and expertise that would allow them to make useful intuitive decisions. Finally, it can teach dysfunctional skills – reliance on features of the technology that fail in unexpected ways.
Summary
Chapter 17 closes the book with a top ten tips for harnessing your intuition, some answers to frequently asked questions and a plea to the reader not to see the book (despite the defensive tone) as exalting intuition in every situation. Overall, I’d definitely recommend this book to anyone whose work or life involves decisions that are “not just routine.” Intuition isn’t everything, it needs to be carefully blended with analytic processes, but it’s clear to me that every day we take decisions on things that analysis cannot decide for us – because we live inside complex systems where immutable facts are often scarce on the ground.
March 17, 2008
Really excellent, interesting book. Reminds me of Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" in its style, as its ideas are drawn from research in multiple fields, but explained using anecdotes in a very conversational style. He makes the case that intuition and reason are two sides of the same coin, and explores the ways in which experts draw on BOTH in order to make sound decisions in crisis situations. The book also contains lots of advice for businesses who are interested in further developing the intuitive capacities of their managers and employees. These suggestions are useful to other fields too.
May 18, 2015
The author is an acknowledged expert in this field which is clearly visible from the conclusions drawn. Add to that the simpllified and clear cut action plan elucidated that can be practised in the day to day lives, and you know that you have a winner. The author has a healthy disrespect for more and more automation as he thinks that this would make people stupid. I am not sure I agree with that. However, a great book and one that is very relevant in the vuca world that we live in now.
February 27, 2019
I blogged this one and Sources of Power together.
https://www.jackvinson.com/blog/2016/...
https://www.jackvinson.com/blog/2016/...
July 25, 2011
This is a great analysis of the practical development of intuition as a tool for success, not as magical ESP. I especially like the "pre-mortem" exercise. This technique has helped me a lot.
Want to read
January 4, 2021I have been skeptical of this book in the past because of its title, but as the blog Commoncog argues:
"Because expert intuition is often portrayed as ‘magical’, we ignore it and turn to more rational, deliberative modes of decision making. We do not believe that intuition can be trained, or replicated. We think that rational choice analysis is the answer to everything, and that amassing a large collection of mental models in service of the search-inference framework is the ‘best’ way to make decisions."
Trial-and-error eventually leads to the ability to pattern match quickly. Once you have enough tacit knowledge acquired through trial and error, you can kind of have all kinds of decision frameworks automatically pop up in your head: in other words, intuition
Looking forward to picking this up
"Because expert intuition is often portrayed as ‘magical’, we ignore it and turn to more rational, deliberative modes of decision making. We do not believe that intuition can be trained, or replicated. We think that rational choice analysis is the answer to everything, and that amassing a large collection of mental models in service of the search-inference framework is the ‘best’ way to make decisions."
Trial-and-error eventually leads to the ability to pattern match quickly. Once you have enough tacit knowledge acquired through trial and error, you can kind of have all kinds of decision frameworks automatically pop up in your head: in other words, intuition
Looking forward to picking this up
March 14, 2016
Gary Klein clearly knows the subject matter and has provided detailed ways to define and improve the concept of intuition. Prior to reading this book, I had read Why Don't Student's Like School by Daniel Willingham, which is a good introduction to cognitive behavior. Klein's book makes for a great sequel to Willingham's book. I think because of Willingham, I was able to better identify with the key concepts that Klein was addressing. If you are new to the fields of behavioral economics or cognitive behavior, I recommend starting with Willingham and then reading Klein. Everything will make sense at that point.
January 6, 2013
Gary does an excellent job showing the importance of the role of intuition in practical everyday decision making at home, on the job and under stressful conditions. The book title could be a little better but the book is worth reading. I think it's one of the best books about decision making. It's very helpful and should be read by every employee and manager.
August 15, 2014
Decent book, good discussion on where intuition fits into the realm of decision making and the limitations of decision enabling tools. REALLY good write up of how our mental models may be weakened by technology spoon feeding us data, or worse, how technology may mislead us by framing data in such a way in that we will be driven to wrong conclusions.
December 10, 2018
everything either felt like I'd already seen it, it was just an incredibly over-extended story meant to ingrain something I'd already seen in my consciousness, or too specific and pointlessly detailed / structured for me to internalize in a useful way,
June 5, 2008
I liked the way this book breaks down the mystical world of intuition, and gives insight and techniques for developing and strengthening a persons thought patterns.
May 24, 2017
“I define intuition as the way we translate our experience into action.” Here is my take on it, I learned that Intuition is not some magical power or extraordinary mental attribute that some have and others don’t. Improved intuition comes from recognition of this unconscious routine and the accumulation of real-world experience. While the stakes are clearly higher in the lives of Klein’s research subjects, the world of business shares the need for quick and accurate decision making. And The Power of Intuition shows you how to trust your gut and improve your own sixth sense.
Klein suggests a variety of ways. Throughout the book, he provides a wide array of decision games. These are simple stories which drop the reader into murky hypothetical situations. In one case, the president of your company asks you to lead a new product development effort with workers idled by weak revenue. Klein then presents twenty-six pieces of information that appear as the project progresses, ranging from coworker gossip to company-wide e-mails, and asks you to note your reaction to each and its impact on your project. This exercise squarely focuses on developing the early skills of the model: filtering cues and seeing developing pattern
Klein suggests a variety of ways. Throughout the book, he provides a wide array of decision games. These are simple stories which drop the reader into murky hypothetical situations. In one case, the president of your company asks you to lead a new product development effort with workers idled by weak revenue. Klein then presents twenty-six pieces of information that appear as the project progresses, ranging from coworker gossip to company-wide e-mails, and asks you to note your reaction to each and its impact on your project. This exercise squarely focuses on developing the early skills of the model: filtering cues and seeing developing pattern
January 1, 2020
This book was recommended to me by an algorithm in my Pinterest and thought to read it briefly as a holiday read. I am not a big fan of self-help books but I found it pretty insightful in some ways.
I read the important bits, so the introduction, chapter one and the final section. As an academic in training it was helpful in the sense that it helped in understanding how to work in a difficult environment, with lots of moving pieces and how this could be beneficial. On the other hand, it was important for an environment that was totally different from mine.
What the book refuses to acknowledge is that intuition is important for survival, but not necessarily for progress. Keeping out of a decision that makes you make bad decisions is more important that having to make the decisions themselves. I had first seen the seeing what others don’t as an option.
The point is that people really aren’t as special and we are all intuitively inclined. What we need is to focus less on defining our process for making decisions, and instead make more decisions that actually matter.
I read the important bits, so the introduction, chapter one and the final section. As an academic in training it was helpful in the sense that it helped in understanding how to work in a difficult environment, with lots of moving pieces and how this could be beneficial. On the other hand, it was important for an environment that was totally different from mine.
What the book refuses to acknowledge is that intuition is important for survival, but not necessarily for progress. Keeping out of a decision that makes you make bad decisions is more important that having to make the decisions themselves. I had first seen the seeing what others don’t as an option.
The point is that people really aren’t as special and we are all intuitively inclined. What we need is to focus less on defining our process for making decisions, and instead make more decisions that actually matter.
February 20, 2020
I liked Klein's exploration of intuition very much. Telling examples.
His definition of intuition built up through repeated experiences that you have unconsciously linked together to form a pattern. (p 21) begs for an answer of how the brain does this.
I provide a neurological answer, the Almost Gate, in the article, Intuition's Source
His definition of intuition built up through repeated experiences that you have unconsciously linked together to form a pattern. (p 21) begs for an answer of how the brain does this.
I provide a neurological answer, the Almost Gate, in the article, Intuition's Source
January 5, 2025
Solid tips on thinking
Pre-Mortem
STICC
Situation, Task, Intent, Concerns, Calibration
Here is what I think we face.
Here is what I think we should do.
Here?s why.
Here is what we should keep an eye on.
Now, talk to me.
Brainstorm individually, not in groups which lead to group think.
Pre-Mortem
STICC
Situation, Task, Intent, Concerns, Calibration
Here is what I think we face.
Here is what I think we should do.
Here?s why.
Here is what we should keep an eye on.
Now, talk to me.
Brainstorm individually, not in groups which lead to group think.
August 26, 2022
This book has one interesting point for me - intuition comes from recognising small cues that we recognise subconsciously and often struggle to identify - hence it sits alongside rational analysis. They are compliments to be used in different situations.
July 25, 2014
The book's title makes one think that it could be a wishy-washy new age publication that attempts to convince us to feel our way around decisions in the office. As it turns out, the author's stance, and also his style, is quite the opposite of that. He advocates using deliberate practice and having structured exercises where one practices and learns the decisions in certain scenarios until it becomes second-nature/part of one's intuition.
The deliberate practice approach is of course much more suitable for situations and professions where there is high repetition in a reasonably defined area; for instance, doctors, nurses, firefighters, retail staff. And it's harder to use for start-ups, people who run technology companies (or indeed most companies these days) because the repetition factor is significantly lower and the unknowns/uncertainty/variability is higher. Nevertheless it's possible to practice a framework of decision-making even when the contributing factors of the decisions are quite different each time.
The author recommends doing a pre-mortem, which is where you work backwards assuming that the project has failed and dissecting why it did. More on the concept here: http://hbr.org/2007/09/performing-a-p...
When I was younger, I leaned heavily on using analysis and rationality and was wary of people who "listened to their gut" and for that matter I wasn't even sure if my "gut" was even able to communicate with me clearly. While I still think that we should be cautious, if not at least be aware, of our biases, foibles, malleable memories etc. and how these factors can affect our intuition or gut instincts, I do agree with the author that there is value in consciously developing our intuition and default decision-making processes.
Here is an interesting interview with the author and Daniel Kahneman: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/stra...
The book has a number of exercises and for a non-academic (popular?) book it can't really be described as a breezy read but it has useful suggestions and helpful insights and I would recommend it, especially as supplement to other decision-making methods and models.
The deliberate practice approach is of course much more suitable for situations and professions where there is high repetition in a reasonably defined area; for instance, doctors, nurses, firefighters, retail staff. And it's harder to use for start-ups, people who run technology companies (or indeed most companies these days) because the repetition factor is significantly lower and the unknowns/uncertainty/variability is higher. Nevertheless it's possible to practice a framework of decision-making even when the contributing factors of the decisions are quite different each time.
The author recommends doing a pre-mortem, which is where you work backwards assuming that the project has failed and dissecting why it did. More on the concept here: http://hbr.org/2007/09/performing-a-p...
When I was younger, I leaned heavily on using analysis and rationality and was wary of people who "listened to their gut" and for that matter I wasn't even sure if my "gut" was even able to communicate with me clearly. While I still think that we should be cautious, if not at least be aware, of our biases, foibles, malleable memories etc. and how these factors can affect our intuition or gut instincts, I do agree with the author that there is value in consciously developing our intuition and default decision-making processes.
Here is an interesting interview with the author and Daniel Kahneman: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/stra...
The book has a number of exercises and for a non-academic (popular?) book it can't really be described as a breezy read but it has useful suggestions and helpful insights and I would recommend it, especially as supplement to other decision-making methods and models.
December 28, 2019
The book had some really good frameworks and concepts about how our brains work, how we make decision and apply intuition.
The main takeaways for me were:
• The Recognition-Primed Decision model which explains how our hunches or intuition come about
• Some practical tips/tools for honing / training intuition e.g. using DMXs, pre-mortems
• Awareness of how our intuition is being eroded and how to address it, especially the parts on coaching others and how smart technology is making us stupid
Unfortunately, the writing / organization of the book made it relatively hard to read, and the level of "how-to" varies. Some parts are pretty vague and I found myself wondering, "so what's the point to this and how do I apply it?"
Overall, it's a good book with lots of interesting ideas to think about, and really detailed examples / case studies on specific aspects or tools. Worth a read.
Book summary at : http://readingraphics.com/book-summar...
The main takeaways for me were:
• The Recognition-Primed Decision model which explains how our hunches or intuition come about
• Some practical tips/tools for honing / training intuition e.g. using DMXs, pre-mortems
• Awareness of how our intuition is being eroded and how to address it, especially the parts on coaching others and how smart technology is making us stupid
Unfortunately, the writing / organization of the book made it relatively hard to read, and the level of "how-to" varies. Some parts are pretty vague and I found myself wondering, "so what's the point to this and how do I apply it?"
Overall, it's a good book with lots of interesting ideas to think about, and really detailed examples / case studies on specific aspects or tools. Worth a read.
Book summary at : http://readingraphics.com/book-summar...
January 5, 2016
Although useful, this book was kind of a drag to read because it is rather dry. There were a number of stories and examples which helped, but I think even more would have been better. Basically, this book is less about "intuition" than about how people make decisions in real life under challenging circumstances. The techniques involved are geared towards helping our natural decision process so we have a better understanding of why we are making a decision and can prepare to make better decisions in the future. The material is good, particularly the chapter on coaching, but it could use a better presentation.
September 8, 2015
Every chapter in this book had something that spoke to me. There was always something that made me think, "I'm taking that back to work with me." Unfortunately, each chapter was so thought provoking I tended to read this slowly and by the time I was ready to go back to work, I'd forgotten the principle I had learned.
May 8, 2009
This book was included in my book: The 100 Best Business Books of All Time. www.100bestbiz.com
July 26, 2012
A concise and clear 'how-to' guide for improving your intuitive decision-makinng skills.
April 2, 2010
Got carried away with reading Blink and it wasn't as good.
March 28, 2017
I liked the examples, but thought he analyzed the "process of intuition" too much. I believe intuition is more of a quick "gut check" like looking at a word you just typed and thinking "that doesn't look right" only on a larger scale.
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