Netflix’s Reed Hastings leans on it. So does SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son. As did Howard Schultz when he ran Starbucks. It has been well-documented that these renowned business leaders have relied on one thing to drive their business decisions: gut instinct.
They’re not alone. Oprah Winfrey once said mistakes happen when she doesn’t listen to that “still, small voice” within her. Richard Branson, who became the first (but amazingly not the only) billionaire to venture into space, has admitted to relying more on gut instinct than research and statistics.
But there’s also no question that businesses increasingly rely on data to make their most important decisions, with the rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) spurring analytics and algorithms, making data-driven thinking that much easier to scale. How, then, do we reconcile this apparent contradiction?
“Data versus intuition is a false choice. You need both,” said Wilfried Schobeiri, chief technology officer at Banyan, a New Jersey–based data marketplace. “The best decisions tend to be those where data supports or enables instinct and intuition to come into play – and are then followed up to measure the impact and success of that decision.”
Just a few years ago, only a little more than one-third of executives trusted their organization’s use of data and analytics, and about 67% had ignored computer-generated data because it contradicted their own intuition, according to a global CEO survey from KPMG.
But a survey by Cognizant and ESI ThoughtLab highlighted the need for more data-driven AI because of the digital transformation that exploded throughout the global coronavirus pandemic. That survey’s results showed two-thirds of executives believe AI plays a considerable role in the future of their businesses. For executives who have already implemented AI in their business, faith in the technology skyrockets to 98%.
Executives are not buying into the hype for nothing. AI is able to process information and predict trends with levels of accuracy that a single human can only dream of. The truth is, one person, even with the most refined executive intuition, can only process so much information at a given moment. AI allows for infinite combinations to be assessed at once.
While AI infinitely speeds up the process, is there a cost of losing the human touch when it comes to important decision making?
It’s often too easy to read datasets, see that data as a bunch of numbers, and divorce those numbers from the flesh-and-blood customers they stand for on the page. That’s why, when thinking about your business, it’s important to remember not to make decisions based on growth and making money alone. You need to consider how your decisions and processes affect actual people, whether your customers, employees, or the larger public. Insights derive from how algorithms analyze the data, so weighing a human element in your decision making becomes equally important.
“If you’re only leaning on data, you’re not taking into account human condition, experiences, and feedback,” said Melissa Doman, a Denver-based organizational psychologist and former clinical mental health therapist. “I suggest leaders take in all the data and then slow down, ask how these decisions are informed by the data, how they’ll land with people. What is the action you want them to take? What is the new thought you want them to have? If you don’t pause to consider how that data will drive behavior, the data will fall flat.”
We can look at this from a medical perspective. More and more, healthcare professionals rely on data to help drive decisions. A doctor can use diagnostic and prescriptive data to help determine a patient’s illness or future health risks based on personal, psychographic, and demographic data.
