“Gut Feeling”
February 3, 2010
We pay a lot of attention here to making decisions based on facts and data – not on feeling and conjecture. There’s a lot to be said for that, as it forces you to pay close attention to tangible outcomes and results instead of investing thousands of dollars because you think it might be the right thing to do.
But there are times when “feelings” can – and should – have a significant impact on your decision-making process.
I read a story a number of years ago about a New York City fire captain, who, upon arriving at the scene of a building and walking into an apartment, immediately ordered all of the other firefighters out of the apartment – NOW.
Seconds later, the floor they had all been standing on just seconds before gave way…and fell into the burning apartment just one story below.
When they interviewed the fire captain afterward, and tried to understand what had led to the immediate action that quite likely saved several lives and many injuries, he said that he didn’t know exactly what it was, but something told him there was something terribly wrong with the situation.
Later on, he was able to piece together exactly what it was: the floor was hotter than it should have been, and yet there was no smoke in the apartment. That told him, unconsciously, and as a result of years of experience, that the fire must have been burning directly below.
The “gut feeling” was just his body compiling this information and feeding it to him in the quickest and most efficient way possible under the circumstances.
Similarly, our brains collect and process information continuously, and feed the results back to us in a variety of ways – including kinesthetically – through intuition, hunches, and gut feelings.
And you can probably think of a time when you had something like this occur, ignored the feeling, and paid a price for it.
Gut feelings aren’t a substitute for measuring key areas of your business and acting on tangible results. But they can be an additional factor – one that can give you an edge over the competition if used properly.
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Recently finished reading “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell, which is a great read on this subject. It is important to recognize when you may not understand why, but you just “know” something is right/wrong and its OK to take action.