October 25, 2011
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Francis Cholle is a classically trained musician, clinical psychologist, international business consultant and author of a new book entitled The Intuitive Compass: Why the Best Decisions Balance Reason and Instinct. Here, he answers a few questions about instinct, reason and trusting your gut when it comes to creativity, innovation and decision-making.
Q: Where does the idea for an "intuitive compass" come from?
A: I was asked to design a training seminar on managing creative teams at the same time that I was becoming increasingly concerned with the lack of sustainable development in the modern world. It dawned on me that the source of creativity and sustainability is the same: a balanced blend of logic and instinct. I wanted to identify a new integrated and balanced approach to business and problem solving that would help us become more creative, prosperous and sustainable.
Q: What’s wrong with how we currently approach innovation and decision-making?
A: The typical path is to apply more analysis, focus more on results and work harder to get those results. It’s this kind of thinking that has led to business models that we’re now finding are hard to sustain. Life and logic don’t always match. We like to think of life as linear and logical, but it isn’t. Success in these days depends on making the leap from seeing the world how we think it operates to how it really operates.
Q: Can you define your term “intuitive intelligence” for me?
A: Intuitive intelligence is a set of skills that uses intuition to get to the instinctual and non-conscious parts of our mind. The four tenets of intuitive intelligence are thinking holistically, thinking paradoxically, noticing the unusual and leading by influence.
Q: Why are those skills important?
A: They collectively allow us to tap into our intuition, so we can to operate in the zone of ambiguity and change. Intuition feeds the rational mind and enables logic to work with paradox. There's a reason we have instinct—it was meant to help us survive. So it would be foolish to ignore it.
Q: So what exactly is the Intuitive Compass?
A: The Intuitive Compass is an approach to decision-making and problem solving that deliberately avoids being exclusively linear and logical and instead draws on your intuitive intelligence. You’ll see how the functioning of the mind and the process of decision-making can be broken up into several clear components. You’ll be able to map your current decision making process based on how well you balance the opposing forces of reason and instinct, and results and play. To be better prepared to innovate and adapt to change is the goal.
Q: So are you opposed to the logical and linear?
A: Not at all! But we need to become more aware of the limits of logic. It's too exclusive—it keeps out everything that isn't logical. So it can keep us from understanding the deeper parts of life and of human nature..the things that are beyond explanation, and that elude logic.
Q: Isn’t a gut decision basically just a guess? How can we rely on a gut decision?
A: A gut decision is often the result of a part of our brain taking in and processing information that we were not conscious of having taken in and processed. When a gut feeling arises before we become conscious of it, it can enrich a decision. The unconscious mind searches through the past, present and future and connects with hunches and feelings in a nonlinear way to produce decisions that are often superior, as scientific research has now proved.
Q: What’s an example of how an executive can benefit from making a gut decision?
A: Jean Rene Fourtou was brought in to head Vivendi Universal and save it. He succeeded, and all of his decisions about how to restructure the company were made with his gut and went against the strong opinion of his board and financial experts.
Q: You talk about "play" in your book...what do you mean and why does it matter?
A: Play is dynamic, spontaneous, free-flowing engagement with anything or anyone. It’s immersing yourself in an activity for pleasure with no other stated goal. It needs to be an essential part of work in order to leverage all that people have to offer. Albert Einstein once said “play is the highest form of research.”
Q: What are some companies that formally encourage play?
A: Google, Pixar, 3M, Kohler, Shell, IBM and Dupont are some of the companies I write about which have realized and leveraged the power of play with formalized initiatives.
Q: Is there a scientific basis to your arguments?
A: Recent neuroscience research has proven that instinct plays a key role in complex decision-making: 80 percent of our grey matter is dedicated to non-conscious thought, and imaginative play is one of the most direct ways to access our creativity and problem-solving abilities. And, from physics and evolutionary biology we know for certain that there is a self-organizing principle that ensures that order will arise from chaos. So, we need to embrace rather than resist that idea.
Q: Your background is a blend of art and business. What's the most valuable thing you've discovered common to both?
A: That great art, as well as great management, is not about control. It's about having discipline in the preparation and surrendering during the performance. It's about not letting fear of change or uncertainty drive us to try and control everything. It's about not trying to eliminate the unknown, but embracing it. If we don't, we work against the creative nature of life and miss out on a wealth of creative solutions.
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