Expert intuition and our known unknowns.

Expert intuition and our known unknowns.

Time to read: 6 minutes.

Start asking the right questions and improve your decision making, learn how to create new fields of expertise by finding relevance and new sources of value.

Any discussion about intuition should probably start with a definition, as most of us probably have an instinct as to what it means. Anything from American presidents perhaps infamously decision making from their “gut” like George W Bush, to half the population of the planet possessing more of it than the other.

Most would probably be willing to accept that intuition reveals itself to us as a kind of unconscious or unguided intelligence; one we’ve all experienced in our lives from time to time as an uninvited presence that veers from a sense of vague unease, to a fully resolved moment of complete knowing.

Intuition appears to work on the principle that the answers are “out there” and we’re just not asking the right questions, or for that matter asking any questions at all. Intuition performs as our “innovator within”, labouring with us as we stumble from bemusement to comprehension and back again; or answering questions that we didn’t know we were even asking, prompting in turn yet more questioning.

There is a growing body of neurological evidence that supports a view of intuition as an unconscious intelligence, but for the purposes of this article we are mainly interested in how we experience intuition, and if we can utilise what appears to be an innovative cognitive capacity to enhance our situational awareness, and aid our learning and decision making.

Why would we be interested in a concept that may appear at first glance to be more of a contradiction than a unique perspective on how we can make better decisions? In answering we need to look toward thinking, or to be more precise thought, both ordinary and intuitive.

Thought, the garden variety of conscious thought that is, we’ll split in two, effortless and effortful. In turn they represent the passive effortless wanderings of our mind when free from our influence, live-streaming images, sensory data, imaginative flights of fancy et al; and our effortful directed thinking when we set our minds deliberately to a task, goal oriented consciously directed mental activity, instrumental means – ends thinking.

There is, as you would expect, a substantial area of overlap between the two, and cognitive processes that exploit the fuzzy boundary, but for our simplified example we’ll consider effortless thought as automatic or habitual, as it’s quick and concerned with ease more than accuracy, it also governs much of our behaviour. Effortful thinking is concerned with problem solving and analysis, it’s slow, deliberate and requires labour on our part to meet our selected goals.

If we created a sliding scale of thought, with effortless-undirected at one end and effortful-directed at the other, we’d probably (intuitively?) place intuition on the scale alongside effortless. Intuition, however, like our thinking comes in varieties, and can often be a slow “process” that reveals itself only after a deliberate and conscious effort to uncover meaning; or in cycles of ignorance and illumination; or as a supplement to our conscious thinking, etc.

So, it would appear that intuition depending on its particular attributes, comfortably slides along our scale of thought. All of which leads us to ponder on the potential of deliberately seeking to combine intuition, as unconscious thinking, with conscious thought. What could the further benefits be for us to combine this with our unconscious – tacit learning, and conscious – explicit learning?

Intuition is an asset that we acquire through experience, a kind of personal capital that gives unpredictably poor returns for most of us, most of the time. In decision making we constantly tack between what is local and distant to us in a “search” pattern formed around the event or object of our focus, our seeking activity requires us to integrate many interdependent elements, and to optimise our outcomes we need more than our conscious thinking or casual unconscious interventions.

The expert intuition of our title refers to a form of specialised knowing, an attribute that is fundamental to expertise, it is far more than simply transmissible knowledge of possible answers, it’s nearer a form of wisdom in knowing what to ignore and a sense of what are the right questions to ask.

We’re probably familiar with “mastery” requiring ten thousand hours to acquire, and we can immediately tell the difference between novice and expert piano players, in one we hear the notes and the other we feel the music. If we created a similar sliding scale of intuition in decision making, the gap between the two would be measured by the quality of our judgement and the improvements we feel in the outcomes of our decision making.

Axios³ is a decision making programme that generates insight and understanding by applying the cognitive tools and skills we all possess, informing and guiding your actions in securing improved outcomes in your life and business.

If you’re interested in any of the themes or concepts introduced in this article, sign up for Generating Insight our newsletter dedicated to decision making. Alternatively, why not participate in the discussion by attending one of the Axios³ workshops.

David Noble is the creator of Axios³, a unique programme dedicated to improving decision making. He is also the author of two books scheduled to be published later this year and next: Worthy of Question – Towards a New Economy of Wisdom; and Our Tribal Selves.