Trust Your Instincts Revisited

Joe Caponi of ChannelWeb Network blogged a reply to my entry, “Trust Your Instincts?” on his blog, http://www.channelweb.com/blog/hottopics/archives/2006/07/taking_on_gladw.html where he noted that Gladwell's ideas do provide some justification for weeding out among different possibilities.

He also noted that the original article (in somewhat altered form) is available online here:
http://www.varbusiness.com/sections/news/breakingnews.jhtml?articleId=189401221

The original article includes several great examples of Gladwell’s premise about using your instincts or subconscious to make quick decisions. The J. Paul Getty Museum researched the history and attributes of an ancient Greek Kouros statue for months before deciding to acquire it. When the museum showed the statue to several art experts, they declared it a forgery. How did they know? They had seen numerous other Greek Kouroi before as a comparison to the Getty acquisition.

Another example cited by Gladwell was a study of tennis pros. However, they could not articulate exactly what they did on the court to win—they just selected an action from their unconscious. Indeed, tennis pros cannot spend any time analyzing and deciding. They must simply respond appropriately in a fast-paced game. The same is true for two other groups discussed by Gladwell: emergency room physicians and police.

But business people do not need to respond instantly. How should you approach this question of instinctual response?

Did you ever have the training that grouped people into four buckets?

1. Conscious Competent
2. Unconscious Competent
3. Conscious Incompetent
4. Unconscious Incompetent

Obviously, the people in buckets 1 and 2 are OK because they know if they are good at a task or not. Gladwell focuses on the first group. The unconscious competent individuals need more self confidence, but will perform the task reasonably well.

The ones to watch out for are the unconscious incompetent decision makers. They do not realize that they are not really qualified to handle the decision in front of them, but they make the decision anyway.

The take-away is that you need to question how the decision maker arrived at the decision. It’s great if he or she can articulate why she chose the path that she did, but some individuals, like the tennis pros, can not explain their reasoning. For these decision makers, ask about their experience and trust their judgment if they have extensive experience.

The last question for you to ask is, “Into which bucket do I fit?”