Posted by Colin Weatherby                                                                         700 words

Some time ago I posted on an idea from Richard Farson’s book, Management of the Absurd – Paradoxes in Leadership. This post has been inspired by another chapter in that book.

Farson says that the one quality that top executives say separates them from their less successful colleagues is their intuition. Their ‘immediate visceral reactions’ to people and events are usually accurate, which makes their judgements valuable. Farson defines intuition as the ‘accumulation of many learning experiences that have sensitised them, making them able to read situations quickly’. It is a quality that allows top management to make fast decisions that are effective. However, when top management starts to lack confidence, they start to apply formal processes to make decisions. They replace their immediate visceral reaction with complicated analytical thinking. Continue reading →