A bit of right brain can lead to the right choices
"I research new ideas very thoroughly, asking a lot of people about their experiences and for
their thoughts. But on many occasions I have followed my intuition — you can’t make
decisions based on numbers and reports alone."
Who said this? It may surprise many, but it's Richard Branson no less. Could it really be that
one of the world's top business leaders thinks his gut has something valuable to say and lets
it guide him in no small way?
While some may immediately balk at the idea, and indeed many executives may say it just
seems too irrational, madness perhaps to use one's intuition. But take a closer look and
there is much more than meets the eye when it comes to intuition – in fact, there's plenty of
method and bottom line merit to this madness.
Branson, in his article published this June, goes on to add that, "it's important to have the
courage to follow through on a project if you believe it’s worth pursuing. We all have an
intuitive sense of what’s best."
"My senior management team keeps everything moving along. My role allows me to dive in
and out of situations, ensuring we keep challenging the orthodoxy in every sector we’re
competing in. This approach has never let me down."
It is here that Branson lets on to a secret to success as a leader and the enduring success of
his business. "Challenging the orthodoxy", as he puts, it is exactly what defines many
leaders who maintain high levels of performance.
Edward de Bono, father of the term 'lateral thinking' and author of the now legendary book
Six Thinking Hats, recently spelled out this need for new ways of being and leading in an
article this June.
"As far as education is concerned, far from encouraging further developments in human
thinking, leadership is more often minded to block such developments. Even if practical
evidence shows the powerful effect of teaching perceptual thinking and creative thinking, the
comfort of complacency, helped by traditional advisers, is more appealing," says De Bono.
De Bono adds that that the prevailing culture of leadership is one of "if isn't broken then why
fix it?" In the end, many procedures continue in the old way when newer technology or
newer market conditions make it possible to find a much better approach.
And it's not just leaders like Branson that concur that using new ways of perceiving can be a
game-changer. In a study by Harvard’s Jagdish Parikh of 13 000 executives, they indicated
that they relied on both left-brain analytical skills and right-brain intuitive feelings equally, but
they credited 80% of their success to right-brain intuition.
Gut feeling, or intuition, then is one powerful way to step out of the tunnel vision trap. But
what exactly is it in the context of leadership?
In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell says that thinking with your gut is usually an
unconscious emotional response to a situation and can be enormously helpful. This will lead
to a stronger awareness of what is going on around you and can guide you into making
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better decisions that will take you out of familiar traps.
In the journal Science, a research article showed that increasingly complex decisions place
increasing strain on cognitive sources. The quality of a person's decisions declines as
complexity increases. Complex decisions, then, overrun cognitive powers. Henry Mintzberg,
in his Harvard Business Review article 'The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning', adds that
when one gets to more senior leadership positions, the demands of strategic thinking are
very different to lower levels of management.
"Planning is about analysis – about breaking a goal into steps, formalising those steps, and
articulating the expected consequences. Strategic thinking, in contrast, is about synthesis. It
involves intuition and creativity," he writes.
It's not, however, about throwing the baby out with the bathwater at executive levels.
Branson emphasises the balancing act as a leader. "First, limit the downside and control the
risks," he advises in his article.
It's not then about left brain thinking versus right brain thinking. It's about finding middle
ground between the two as a leader. It's about breaking out of the "comfort of complacency"
as De Bono puts it. Doing this is no easy task, but some business schools such as the UCT
Graduate School of Business (GSB) are beginning to break new ground in helping leaders to
break their own barriers. The GSB is one of the first business schools in the world, for
example, to offer a short-course for executives to improve their ability to grapple with
complexity and improve levels or creativity through intuition.
The course, running this September, aims to enhance executives' abilities to make informed
intuitive decisions, explore win-win solutions, and slow down at crucial pressured moments
to consider different solutions.
The narrow filters through which people view the world can lead to some dire consequences
– decisions based on numbers and reports alone can leave executives far too near-sighted.
Looking at the recent recession, it is perhaps a consequence of short-sighted number
crunching. The enduring and great leaders find that a bit of right brain can go a long way in
making the right choices.
Chris Breen is programme director of the short course ‘Leading with Intuition’ at the UCT
Graduate School of Business in September. Email abrahams@gsb.uct.ac.za. Breen is an
Emeritus Associate Professor at UCT. Jane Boxall and Michael Morgan write for the GSB.
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Media interested in an interview or more information can contact Jane Notten or
Michael Morgan on 021 448 9465 or email info@rothko.co.za.
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