PSYCHOLOGY: THE ESSENCE OF THOUGHT
INTUITION II
Masaru Ibuka, founder of Japan’s Sony Corp., was
once asked in an interview: “What is the secret of
your success?” Ibuka then proceeded to share his secret
ritual. Before moving ahead on a business deal, Ibuka
would drink some herbal tea. Before sipping the tea, Ibuka
would ask himself: “Should I make this deal or not?” Ibuka
would not strike the deal if the tea gave him indigestion.
He says: “I trust my gut, and I know how it works. My
mind is not that smart, but my body is.”
Gut feeling or intuition is what most successful people
rely on when making crucial decisions. Though intuition
is an abstract feeling, allowing you to simply know without
a rational process, experts say it is a skill and can be honed
through different techniques, with each individual
evolving his own style.
Michael Munn, a former aerospace chief scientist at
Lockheed, has successfully dealt with many multi-million
dollar projects. An instance of one project was a programwhose goal was to put an end to Russian nuclear bomb
capability in space. While working on it, Munn would
meditate for brief periods throughout the day. This gave
him time to listen to his intuition. Munn says: “How do I
know the answers are there? I see pictures or movies or
dreamlike sequences. I have an immediate inner knowing
that this is the answer for which I was waiting. My
intuition lets me know, ‘This is it!’” While meditating in
his car during lunch, Munn “saw” an effective method of
shooting down missiles which proved accurate when
tested practically.
Similarly, Phil Lipetz, a molecular biologist and
venture capitalist, during a meditation “saw” how DNA
is related to cancer and aging. Intuitive practices of
creative visualization enhanced Einstein’s understanding
of the laws of physics. Einstein once said that there is “no
logical path leading to these laws. They can be reached
only by intuition, and this intuition is based on an
intellectual love of the objects of experience.”
Companies are beginning to recognize the benefits of
using intuition in the boardroom. Reflecting on the trend,
former Chrysler Chairman, Robert Eaton, once said:
“We’ve... put so much faith in analysis and quantification
and other areas of left-brain thinking, we’ve often missed
the forest for all the well-examined trees. Over the past
few years, I’ve been on a sort of a personal crusade at Chrysler
to legitimize what, for lack of a better term, I refer to
as right-brain thinking.”
According to research, intuition and right-brain
functioning bring creativity and humor to a person’s
disposition, along with an ability to solve problems and
deal with people in an effective
manner. According to Peter
Senge in The Fifth Discipline,
“People with high levels of personal
mastery do not set out to
integrate reason and intuition.
Rather, they achieve it naturally
– as a by-product of their commitment
to use all the resources
at their disposal. They cannot afford
to choose between reason
and intuition, or head and heart,
any more than they would choose
to walk on one leg or see with
one eye.”
In a survey of 1,312 managers
in nine countries, whose results
were published in Jadish Parikh’s
Intuition: The New Frontier in
Management, almost 80 percent used intuition in
corporate decisions and believed that it contributes to
corporate success. Sharing his ideas on intuition, Michael
Ray, who taught the ‘Personal Creativity in Business’
course in Stanford University’s MBA program, says that
there are five truths about intuition. The first is that
intuition must be developed. The second holds that the
combination of reason, experience, information and
intuition is powerful. Third, intuition is mostly an
unemotional response. Fourth, intuition can be largely
mistake-free. And fifth, it requires action coupled with
hard work.
Though analysis and rigorous intellectual assessment
of data has its own unique place, enterprises across the
world are opening up to the simple idea of relaxing and
listening to the intuitive voice. As an old Buddhist saying
goes, “Do nothing and everything will be accomplished.”
