Intuition, Emotions, and Decision Making How to improve the quality of your decisions Uri Galimidi, June 13, 2009   How Do We Make Decisions?   The commander of the fire fighting brigade did not like what he was seeing. For the past several minutes his men had been fighting the fire in the living room, but the fire would not subside. “Let’s get out of here. NOW!” the commander shouted. The men left the house promptly. Two minutes later, the living room floor collapsed into the roaring fire that had been raging in the basement below, of which fire fighters were not aware. It could have ended in disaster.   “How did you know?” Gary asked the commander later. “Not sure”, said the commander. “Perhaps I have extra-sensory perception”. After analyzing many similar situations, Gary concluded that the commander realized that something was amiss with the behavior of this fire, when he subconsciously compared it to the patterns of the countless fires he had previously experienced. (Gary Klein is a psychologist specializing in the science of decision making. His book is titled The Power Of Intuition, Random House, 2004.)   The Three Ingredients of Decision Making.   How do we make decisions? Emergency decisions in life threatening situations, business decisions with major economic implications, or decisions of a personal nature? How much do we know about the processes that take place in our brains when we make decisions? Can neuroscience teach us ways to improve our decision making processes? Neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio, Antoine Bechara, Hans Breiter, Brian Knutson, and many others, identified the three processes involved in decision making:   Intuition.  Intuition is the subconscious and instantaneous process of interpreting the situation at hand, by taking in all sensory signals representing the situation, and then comparing the holistic picture to our knowledge and memories of similar situations stored deep in the memory circuits of our brain. Emotions.  Scientists define our four prime emotions as being Fear, Anger, Sadness, and Joy. Some scientists add Disgust and Surprise to the top four. Others define Motivation as a force akin to emotions. Using modern technology such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scientists have been able to identify the powerful influence of our subconscious and conscious emotions on our decisions and actions. Cognition.  Often called the executive center of our brain, the Prefrontal Cortex (at the front of the frontal lobes), is the area of our brain that integrates the inputs from all other areas, and executes functions such as long term planning, reasoning, judgment, and decision making.   Understanding the role that intuition, emotions, and cognition play in our decisions will help us learn how to harness them in a way that will lead to better decision making.   The Will To Change is currently conducting additional research into Management Decision Making. If you wish to participate in this research, please contact us at uri@thewilltochange.com.   Intuition – An Ally Or A Foe? In their Harvard Business Review (HBR) article (February 2009) Andrew Campbell and his colleagues recount the decision made by Brigadier General Matthew Broderick on August 29, 2005. Brigadier Broderick was the man in charge of the Homeland Security Operations Center during Hurricane Katrina. On that Monday evening, before going home, Broderick had to prepare a situation assessment for his superiors at the Whitehouse. By that time Broderick had received 17 reports of major flooding and levee breaches. He had also received reports from Bourbon Street, where people had been celebrating their escape from the devastating hurricane. Based on his past experience with several lower category hurricanes, Broderick decided to discount the reports of levee breaches, and assume that they would turn out to be an exaggeration, as had happened several times in the past. So before going home that evening, Broderick issued a report stating that the levees seemed to be holding. Clearly, when our intuition is based on memories and experiences with situations that are different from the situation at hand, our decisions may turn out to be grossly misguided.   Emotions - Our Most Powerful Guide.   Emotions. We cannot make decisions without them, yet overly intense emotions may lead us to misguided decisions or outright disastrous ones.   Take for example the continuous rejection by Yahoo founder Jerry Yang, of the $45 billion offer by Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer to buy Yahoo. Clearly a decision of this nature involves very complex rational considerations on both sides. But were there any emotions involved? The New York Post reported on February 19, 2008: According to one source close to the situation, "The emotional part of Yang would rather do anything but sell to Microsoft”. At the time the market value of Yahoo was $39 billion. Today it is $22 billion. The impact of Yang’s decision on Yahoo’s shareholders was enormous. Jerry Yang resigned as chief of Yahoo on November 18, 2008.   A well regulated emotion system is essential for our survival and development. But once the system gets out of balance, it can lead us to disastrous decisions and actions.   The Pitfalls of Decision Making.   As in most situations in life, awareness is the most important tool in improving any process. Researchers such as Gary Klein and Antoine Bechara led us to identify the following top three pitfalls inherent in the decision making process:   1. Erroneous Intuitive Response. The first pitfall is when we intuitively or subconsciously draw on irrelevant past experiences, believing that they are similar to the situation at hand, and may therefore be used as a valid reference.   2. Powerful Emotional Dissonance. The most powerful influence over our decisions is that of our emotions. The trouble is that they often act subconsciously, without us being aware of their intervention. The pitfall occurs when these powerful emotions drive us to decisions which are completely at odds with our core values or with the rational criteria we have established to guide our decisions.   3. Rationalizing Irrational Assumptions. So powerful is the influence of our emotions that we sometimes tend to rationalize totally unfounded assumptions, in order to trick our rational brain into supporting the decisions that our emotions drive us to make.   Avoiding The Pitfalls.   So how do we guard against these pitfalls? How can we harness the power of our intuition and our emotions to help us in making successful decisions? If you are facing a major decision and you want to avoid these pitfalls, consider the following approach. 1. First Some Prep Work. First write down the objectives of your decision. Then write your vision of the end state, once the outcome of your decision has been fully attained. And last write down your core values and the rational criteria to guide your decision. 2. In Tune With Your Intuition. The purpose of this step is to assess the nature of the situation at hand, versus the past experiences that may be subconsciously guiding your decision. If your past experiences are fundamentally different from the circumstances of your current decision, you may wish to discount the impact of those experiences on your decision. For example, if your intuition is telling you to launch a new product line based on your successful experiences with past launches, yet the new product is in a field in which you have no expertise, your intuition may be based on irrelevant experiences. 3. Take Stock of Your Emotions. This step will help you ensure that your emotions are not driving you in a direction which is inconsistent with your core values. Consciously think about the emotions you feel when you are deliberating your decision. If you find major inconsistencies between your emotions and your core values, you need to reassess your decision. If for example, one of your core values is Integrity, yet your desire for reward (or greed) is driving you to a business decision that might compromise your partner or shareholders, you have to reconsider your decision. 4. Have You Asked Enough Questions? The last step is to examine the key assumptions upon which your decision is based. Often we so desperately want to believe our assumptions so that we can rationally justify our decision. If you are not comfortable with the soundness of your assumptions, you should go back to the drawing board. Take for example the assumption made recently by many home buyers that home prices would continue to appreciate, and that they would be able to refinance their mortgages at low rates. So strong was their emotional drive that they were not willing to consider an alternative scenario. 5. Invite An Outside Intervention. If at the end of this assessment, you are still not comfortable with your decision, it may be time to invite an outside intervention. It may be a coach, a consultant, or a facilitator. A coach will help you articulate your core values, understand the emotions that are driving you, ask you insightful questions, and help you see things more objectively. A consultant will help you further research the factors affecting your decision, and better assessing the risks and rewards. A proficient facilitator will guide you and your team through a structured deliberation of the decision ahead, and will ensure that the group dynamics is well balanced.     Armed with this approach you are bound to ensure that the wisdom of your intuition and the power of your emotions will serve to positively guide and reinforce your decisions.   Copyright © 2009 The Will To Change Inc. To participate in our Decision Making Research or to read the full article, please visit www.thewilltochange.com. For further enquiry e-mail uri@thewilltochange.com