Written by Vipul Kumar Singh
on February 28, 2017

Decision Making - Intuition

Many decisions we take do not undergo process of formal decision making as shown below.

graph LR A[Define] --> B[Generate Alternatives] B[Generate Alternatives] --> C[Evaluate] C[Evaluate] --> D[Choose] D[Choose] --> E[Impliment]

Intutive decision making follows a different model. It is fundamentally a pattern recognition and pattern matching based on past experience.

graph TD A[Cues - From events / surroundings] --> B[Trigger Thinking] B[Trigger Thinking] --> C C[Subconsciously - Brain matches cues with past patterns] --> D D[Comparision - Brain compairs past and present patterns] --> E E[Reason by analogy] --> F[Course of action based on scripts]

Key Questions

What goes into mind when we use intuition ?
Can we harness and enhance our intuition ?

Intuition gradually develops with increasing expertise. Mind builds patterns subconsiciously and does pattern matching based on cues from current situation.

Intuitation can NOT be developed by reading and attending lectures, it gets developed over time with experience. Intuition can be passed on to others by thiking out loud or describing the thinking process behind decision making.

Dangers of Intuition

We are susciptible to cognitive biases
Reasoning by analogy is a critical part of intuitive decision making, but we tend to make mistakes by picking up wrong analogy.
In complex and ambiguous situations, the noise obscures our vision we are not able to see through the underlying patterns.
Our models may be outdated, overtime the models may no longer hold true and we need to be aware of it.
Novelty becomes a problem as intuitive process relies on past experience.

Communicating intuitive decisions

Effectively communication intuitive thinking can back fire, explaining intuition is difficult and can be misinterpreted. We can effectively communicate our intuitive decisions by following these steps :

Assessment of situation - Explain your assessment of the situation
Here is what we should do - Explain clearly the steps that needs to be taken
Why - Also expalain why these steps need to be taken
Keep and eye - This is very important, clearly define things / situations that we need to keep an eye on.
Tell me what you understood - Ask them to explain the above

Intuition + Analysis

Best in buisness use both intuitiona and analysis to take desisions, they should go hand in hand. Here is how we can use them in a way that they supliment each other.

Use analysis to check intuition, not justify but check.
Use intuiation to validate and test assumtion that underlie formal analysis.
Use analysis to explore the intuitive doubts that have developed.
Use outside expert’s intuition to validate decision,
Rules and procedure should ot replace intution they should go hand in hand

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