While intuition is becoming recognized as a cognitive skill set, it's defined business linkages are still evolving. Three significant areas stand out where intuition can have a direct, relevant and potentially powerful leveraging effect. These are Business Intelligence Processes, People/Performance and Innovation. Here are some ways to apply intuition in your organization for winning results.
Business Intelligence Processes
The past several years of adaptive technology integration has equipped most businesses with the capacity to acquire competitive, market and other business intelligence in expedient ways. Increasingly technology has also brought powerful opportunities to connect information with people, tap into knowledge and network reservoirs and introduce new processes for collaborative communication. What it does well is bring predictive modeling into effect with limitations. Although accurate, virtually all interpretation is based on data and trend indicators that existed in the past. While the capability to blend predictive systems can lead to new knowledge convergences, none has accounted for the "surprise" factor, emotional marketplace issues, or anticipating unexpected trends and opportunities. This is where intuition can potentially provide it’s most beneficial and valid supplementary data stream.
What to do:
Include intuitive information as a valid feedback loop in business intelligence. As a preliminary step the executive management group must validate the business reasons for including intuitive feedback. Next develop a process to collect intuitive data that links to business feedback systems. Learning and organizational specialists can help define this. Include identifying people and business areas that can collectively provide the best field sense data, (likely to extend beyond analysts). Develop a valid information structure to focus the feedback. Then provide training for the group that will be involved in the intuitive information collection process.
Training Challenge:
Developing primary intuitive skills, such as sensing non-informational data using visual cues, feelings, and other subtle reference senses.
Discerning valid intuitive information from other types of information.
Providing an environment that augments the subtle senses and isolates the group temporarily from the excitement of the production environment.
Designing a collaborative collection process that maps on to the business process in relevant ways.
Assessing results, cues, hits, and misses and linking this to continued development.
People and Performance
While technology advances have increased organizational productivity, the next business cycle, tempered by globalization, will focus on organizations becoming more capable through people. This will require significant and wise investment in human capital as the value asset of a corporation. Training to extend cognitive capability and engage commitment through a meaningful compelling vision will directly influence an organization’s mastery in managed outcomes. Minimizing human waste through stress and unproductive work environments will be paramount.
Intuition is a strong personal factor in emotional intelligence. Someone whose intuition antennae are "on" can identify early warning signs in relationships and projects that can translate into difficulty later on. An intuitively capable individual brings added value through providing opportunities to validate his or her subjective perceptions with questions, the answers to which can provide the communication and trust basis needed to understand and address issues with others.
A welcoming environment for intuitive capability includes a basis in honesty, mutual respect and transparent motivation, all the attributes needed for a positive workplace. Organizations with negative politics or dysfunctional management are not good candidates.
Intuition has a role in solving problems, making decisions, and leveraging wisdom to produce results that stand. Actively intuitive people are more likely to be engaged and committed to your business because they are more wholly involved.
What to do:
Include intuition and intuitive intelligence as a personal cognitive skill or collective competency for your organization. Define areas where generated outcomes that can be linked to intuitive capability, such as performance, anticipatory problem-solving, opportunities to build relationships, improve performance or operational efficiencies.
Provide intuition development training to your staff. Help establish linkages in intuitive problem-solving by publishing relevant business cases where perception and outcome are directly related to a tangible business result.
Training Challenge:
Engage basic intuitive awareness practices that "turn up" the intuitive senses.
Teach people to pay attention to their intuitive perceptions and become skilled in recognizing when perception is reality.
Foster an attitude of creative play, lightheartedness and experimentation to encourage intuitive learning.
Define the possible outcomes of intuition for people, performance, and business.
Intuition, imagination and the creative process are closely aligned. Imagination is a starting point for new products and evolutions in service and cycle time. Intuition is a feedback mechanism that can help identify improvement areas, potential risks and timing issues. All play an important role in innovation. Innovation begins with strategy, a clearly defined business goal that includes specific innovation outcomes in real terms. After this an organizational commitment to turn people into innovators and make best use of their creative and intuitive skills needs to be backed up with a training plan to develop and monitor skills transfer into relevant results.
What to do:
Define the role of innovation in your business. Identify the strategic points in the business process that offer the highest capacity for contribution to the innovation process and the specific innovation outcomes expected at each phase. Also include the business impact of potential outcomes beyond these. Define training areas for skill development for all staff involved in the innovation process - including imagination, creative thinking skills and intuitive cognition, as well as applied innovation training to transfer ideas into tactical outcomes. Include a defined communication plan and innovation leadership responsibilities of champions, teams and others.
Training Challenge:
Develop an integrative curriculum of innovation skills for both early and advanced curriculum with monitoring to improve training over time based on results.
How to maximize training transfer into useful operations processes.
The best way to deploy training to your workforce for maximum engagement.
Arupa Tesolin is a speaker and training leader with Intuita, who conducts business seminars and tele-seminars on intuition and innovation, and has an On-Line Learning Institute for management & employee skills. Arupa is the recognized author of numerous international publications on intuition in business, training and management. Contact her at 905.271.7272, intuita@intuita.com or www.intuita.com.
