Supplement your gut feeling with data analysis

A leader or a decision maker never ignores his/her intuition or gut feeling. However, it should be supported with data analysis that comes with experience, training and knowledge.

A leader or a decision maker never ignores his/her intuition or gut feeling. However, it should be supported with data analysis that comes with experience, training and knowledge.

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However, overdose of data sometimes lead to “analysis paralysis” but conscious and gut feeling filters critical facts and separates it from the not so critical. This is how a decision-making process evolves over a period of time.

No decision can be taken in the absence of critical facts and without this it would be purely a shot in the dark. It has been proven that even the decisions taken by most successful coaches in the field are mostly based on data. As the famous saying goes, “God is in detail actually god is also in the data”.

(Salil Kapoor, chief operating officer, Dish TV)

Leaders are often forced to take decisions in a short span of time, choosing from multiple alternatives they have not encountered before. Some respond to the urgency of such situations by unknowingly changing the way we make decisions, and, quite frequently, this means turning to intuition or gut-feel.

Going with your gut is often good especially when pressed for time, as doing an exhaustive analysis. The problem with the latter is that extraneous details can get in the way, obscuring what maybe not so relevant, ultimately delaying the decision-making process (“paralysis by analysis”). More detailed analysis does not necessarily improve a decision, but often makes it worse. It’s always about using your experience to identify what level of information is “right” to focus on taking a “decision”.
(Vipul Doshi, CEO, InterGlobe Technologies )