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MANAGEMENT
BY INTUITION Intuitive consultant Bob Jajko wants business people to tap into their "cosmic information bank." Bob Jajko, an intuitive business coach, is convinced intuition and 'gut' feelings play a pivotal role in making business decisions. "We all tend to get these feelings but we discount them," Jajko says. "Sometimes it takes a lot of guts to listen to your intuition." Business people trying to make important business decisions should collect all the facts, clear their minds and just "tune into the cosmic radio," he says. Like a muscle, the more often people follow their intuition to hire employees or propose an wacky idea to a client, the stronger and more developed it will get, says Jajko. "The more you trust your intuition, the more you'll get intuitive nudges," he says. And according to Jajko, trusting and following those inner voices doesn't only help to handle clients. Visualisation and affirmation techniques can be used to attract business, he says. Those gut feelings can also come in handy when business owners or managers are faced with tough hiring decisions. "The trickiest part of trusting this stuff is that it's intangible," he says. Skeptical? While intuition shouldn't be the only rationale behind those big business decisions, it's not to be discounted either, says Joseph Weintraub, a management professor at Wellesley's Babson College. "Intuition is definitely needed in business," says Weintraub. For example, he points to Federal Express Corp. founder Fred Smith. Urban legend has it that Smith received a mediocre grade in college when he proposed the idea of package delivery as a profitable business model. History shows the professor was wrong, and Smith's intuition was right. "There was clearly something there he needed to follow," says Weintraub. And the need to use intuition in business spans a variety of industries, adds Weintraub. Just as entrepreneurs need to trust their intuition and take leaps of faith, so does the software engineer creating a computer game, he says. Also, "managerial roles in business require a lot of intuition," he says. "Some of it requires using past data, but some of it is evaluating values and deciding if it's the right thing to do," for the employees and the business. And, ultimately doing the "right" thing is what Jajko's message boils down to. For him, using intuition to influence business decisions essentially means doing what feels comfortable -- even if it seems, at face value, to be a little offbeat. "It doesn't make sense to me that I should say, 'this feels really bad, I'm going to do it,"' said Jajko. "When you trust your impulses, and enthusiasm, 'luck' tends to happen."
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