Business Ideas
Should You Trust Your Gut Feeling In Business?
Should You Trust Your Gut Feeling In Business?
Should You Trust Your Gut Feeling In Business? But the question is, does wickedness have a place in your decision making process?
If you’re not familiar with the idea of gut feeling, it’s a natural reaction of people, places, situations and decisions that some people rely on to make decisions. Sometimes, they operate from conscious emotions. Second time, our auto-gut sense is triggered by something we’re completely unaware of.
Following your instincts can sometimes lead to major consequences. However, your gut shouldn’t be the deciding factor in your everyday business decisions. Let’s take a look at this.
Factors that affect our “signature”
Although it sounds nice to say you trusted your gut and succeeded at something, success depends on more than just instinct. There are many factors that can influence what our gut interprets as feeling, including:
- Our emotional state
- Stressed out or overwhelmed
- Complexity of the issue
- How long do we have to decide?
- Finance
- Closely tied pressure from partners, coworkers, employees, clients, or anyone else in our business
When we are faced with a difficult or complicated decision, we often tend to lean on our own wickedness. Burning or spreading too thin can help us find immediate relief. Crushing your gut may help you avoid the annoying nature of analyzing data and evidence, but it’s also one way we need to work to make tough decisions.
Following your instincts can be the short cut when you’re overwhelmed. But it could be incredibly expensive in the long or short term.. It’s easier to lean on that strong instinct than it is to analyze the situation. And, as business owners, we’re all looking for ways to take some work off our plates. However, making poor decisions based on a gut feeling will create unnecessary work in the long run.
Sometimes, your gut feeling can be clear and reassuring. But if you don’t have facts, experience, options and data to weigh against it, it can easily mislead you.
Unconscious prejudice masquerades itself as gut feeling
Also, our unconscious biases play a heavy hand in our automatic reactions to situations, people, and decisions that affect our business. Unconscious prejudice is a prejudice that we carry without realizing it. Our background and culture can also influence prejudice.
It’s easy to get confused with unconscious prejudice. This is because prejudice is automatic, just like gut feeling. And, prejudice is often strong – even if it’s unintentionally. As a result, it could be too easy to mistake prejudice for a decisive interrogation.
Unconscious bias can affect your ability to make the right decisions when hiring services. You could potentially be missing out on important partnerships because of this. And you can have so many opportunities for success. If you follow your gut and don’t grasp your bias, you could be missing out on important connections and product.
Data and analysis can support or prove instinct wrong
Good instincts can be proven or proven wrong by data, analysis and strong evidence. If you’re faced with a big business decision, you should always look at facts and figures, regardless of what your gut says. If your instinct is on point, the data will tell you. And if you’re wrong, you’ll have data and information to help you decide your next moves.
When you have that hard gut feeling about a business decision, stop, and look at the data. Ask questions. Talk to teachers who give solid advice from their experiences. Read about other businesses who have faced similar decisions. Evaluate the evidence from your past experience, and look carefully at your options.
When is your gut properly trusted in business?
There are times in business when trusting your gut can help you make better decisions. Usually, these scenarios come once you’ve carefully considered the situation based on evidence and information. First think about your logic and reason. Then, listen to your gut.
Rather than informing you of your final decision, your gut can actually help you dig deeper for more information.
Here are some ways you can leverage your gut feeling to dig deeper:
- During the hiring process, you have selected a strong candidate. They have a very large portfolio and seem to be able to do the job well. You’re willing to hire them, but something doesn’t feel right. You keep thinking about an interview question that makes you feel uncomfortable, but you’re not sure what caused it. Anyway, everything is great on paper. Instead of just being served based on data, you have to trust your gut and do a follow-up interview to dig a little deeper. Your follow up conversation confirms that the candidate is not fit, after all.
- The marketing strategy you created for your client isn’t performing well, and you’ve done everything you can to adjust based on analytics. You may suspect that adjusting a campaign message can boost audience response, but your client’s market research and preliminary data points to the strategy you’re using right now. Although you want to go with your gut and adjust messaging, you decide to gather more information from the client’s audience. Changing tracks without researching your opinion can cost you and your client’s time and money. So instead you survey their followers and verify your instincts before adjusting the message.
- Your competitors are offering a new service, and they seem to be succeeding. Your gut feeling tells you that you should add the same service for the options you come across for potential customers. But when you learn more about it, you find that it’s a trend that’s already lost steam for many entrepreneurs. Further that your data and analytics tell you that your audience is less likely to be cut. Instead of adding a service to your portfolio, you decide to pass it on..
Wrapping it up
Love the idea of following our gut feeling – and makes us feel good too. This shows the power of decision making which common human beings have. But, that gut feeling can lead you down the wrong path. Instead, you should base your business decisions on data.. At best, your gut instinct should be a guiding factor as you dig deeper into solid facts and evidence. Should You Trust Your Gut Feeling In Business?
