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AGAIN Download PDF MISAUSTRALIA August 2004 Modern business
is analysing itself to death. It’s time to reconnect with
something primal – your much maligned gut instinct.
Despite the loss, IBM’s engineers were resolute; once you really understand a problem, it can be reduced to a computational algorithm, they insisted. Given the right algorithm (and by no means should one underestimate the complexity contained therein), the computer then takes the upper hand. Able to match the analytical skills of its human challenger, the computer snatches a lead when stress or exhaustion clouds the human’s crucial intuitive capacity. And so it was.
The 1997 rematch saw Kasparov take the first game, lose the next,
draw the following three, and commit a fatal Before each
move, Deep Blue’s processing unit, Deep Thought, would assess
its options at a rate of a million positions, and their consequences,
per second. Was Kasparov achieving similar feats at a semi or sub-conscious
level? And if so, how did Kasparov manage to select the right move
out of these millions of choices? NO BLUEPRINT Business coach and director of the New Vision Institute Bob Jajko believes the answer lies in Kasparov’s very human capacity for intuition. “There
are two things that one needs to understand about intuitive ability,”
explains Jajko. “The first is the mechanism is different “The second
is that the only time intuition doesn’t work is where people
are stressed, or sick, or hung over; when they are Anecdotal evidence
for the success of gut instinct-based decision-making abounds. Brazilian
author and management guru MTV founder and former America Online president Bob Pitman famously claimed to make his most important decisions while zoning-out in the shower every morning. Closer to home,
Melbourne-based hospitality magnate Bruce Mathieson claims to have
amassed his estimated A$360 million “One
of the reasons I’ve always found business very simple is that
you’re dealing against educated people who make things OPPOSING HEMISPHERES Left-brain/right-brain
processing, which gained attention in the 1980s, backs up many of
Jajko’s ideas. Nobel-prize winning Sperry’s work indicated the left hemisphere was responsible for rational, logical, analytical and verbal processing, whereas the right hemisphere dealt with conceptual, intuitive, imaginative and nonverbal processing. Those who are left-brain dominant are pattern users, those who are right-brain dominant, pattern seekers. However, problem
solving is not an either/or exercise. The right-brain governs the
experimentation, metaphoric thinking and risk taking required for
innovation, but without the left-brain’s capacity for logical,
rational analysis, the actual implementation of any idea would be
near impossible. SO WHAT? What does all this mean for business? According to a study conducted by Harvard Business Review (HBR) researcher Alden Hayashi, senior executives are differentiated from their mid-level counterparts by their proven capacity to make intuitive decisions, at times without having consciously processed much of the relevant information. This poses problems for executives taking traditional career paths and focusing on left-brain processing throughout university and mid-level management. However, Jajko believes it is possible to rekindle right-brain processing and make the jump to effective senior management.
“To the
untrained person, intuition is a sporadic event that they sometimes
listen to. “Our
education system requires us to learn by [rational] left-brain function,
not by any other approach. So often when we make decisions, there
is too much logical stuff, too TUNING IN So, how do
you tap into this innate but suppressed ability? Jajko’s approach
suggests executives begin by taking time out every day “Personal reflection opens up pathways for new ideas,” he says. “When they are looking for an edge in business, they need to do something that shifts their thinking and gives them a different perspective.” In one of the
cases studied by HBR’s Hayashi, former Chrysler president
Bob Lutz, while driving in the country, made a US$80m (A$110.91m)
decision to take the company miles away from its affordable family
models and develop a spunky, grunty two-seater sports car. So strong
the previously
moribund company a breath of life through the 1990s. What is interesting
about the Chrysler example is that Lutz’s intuition enabled
him to take the company in a totally unexpected direction, providing
it with an edge over its competitors. Even if he had looked, he
would not have found the idea in the company’s market research.
This capacity According to Jajko, executives can stimulate the same intuitive juices sparked by Lutz’s country drive by doing anything that takes them away from the everyday business environment. Jogging, swimming, meditation – even sleeping – can all help with the intuitive process. “Looking
after your body provides you with the inner resources you need,
but it also provides you with a sense of wellbeing,” says
Jajko. A MATTER OF TRUST “In the end, most business decisions made at a senior level are made intuitively. That’s the reality,” says Jajko. “Despite having the most amazing amounts of information to understand and interpret, human beings still make decisions at the gut level.” He points out
that his approach essentially enables his clients to recognise “The more we open up to our creativity, the more business becomes innovative, and if businesses do not become innovative and change with the times, they’re not going to be around in 10 or 20 years’ time,” he says. While he can’t
guarantee to have senior managers playing chess like Kasparov, Jajko
says his methods could enable even the most GUT-WRENCHING DECISIONS Sudden flashes of inspiration are often accompanied by some kind of physical sensation. In fact, the trigger for this response is set off before we are consciously aware of its cause. Physical and emotional responses, memory, time and, to a certain extent, learning, are governed by the limbic, or mammalian brain. Like the two
hemispheres of the brain, the limbic system is also divided into
two halves. However, it is the limbic system that first receives
signals from the outside world, triggering a physical response before
we In fact, we are blissfully unaware of most of the information processing we carry out. The self-awareness approach suggested by Bob Jajko and others may enable us to search through this information and become consciously aware of things we already knew. A sudden pang in the gut may be the first indication we get of a truly inspired resolution of a problem we are facing. The physical
response triggered when our right-brain comes up with an idea, that
our left-brain then tells us might just work, suggests the hemispheres
of the brain also feed information back into the limbic system.
Of course, this is a gross simplification of the actual connections
between the different elements of our Nonetheless,
the existence of a physical response to ‘eureka’ moments
is not in any doubt, and the ability to seek out and recognise this
sensation is an advantage to those attempting to turn on, or encourage,
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IN 1996, IBM’S DEEP BLUE COMPUTER took on chess grandmaster
Gary Kasparov. Although he lost the first game,
However,
Jajko’s approach requires more than a weekend workshop and
a jog around the block. He suggests a course of up to two years,
where executives gradually learn to listen to, and trust, their
internal intuitive voice.