58% of strategic decisions are guided by intuition, according to Gut & Gigabytes, a PwC-sponsored survey. Find out more about how to improve intuitive decision-making.

1. DECISION-MAKING
20TIPS
FOR MAKING
INTUITIVE
DECISIONS

2. 58%
DECISION-MAKING
of strategic decisions are guided
by intuition, according to Gut &
Gigabytes, a PwC-sponsored
survey of executives.

3. DECISION-MAKING
Mental hygiene
To improve intuitive decision-making, take steps
to shape up the inputs that tacitly inform “gut
feelings.” Here are 20 tips to guide that process,
divided into three distinct stages:
Expansion
Disconnection

4. DECISION-MAKING
MENTAL HYGIENE
1
Self-diagnose
Analyze yourself; identify your
feelings and how they manifest
themselves. When you know
yourself well, it’s easier to
separate emotion from intuition.

5. DECISION-MAKING
MENTAL HYGIENE
Work to overcome prejudices,
aversion to risk,
overconfidence and other
potential limitations.
Push beyond limits
and biases
2

6. 3
DECISION-MAKING
MENTAL HYGIENE
Make it happen
Once you've identified a business
opportunity and analyzed the
information, get moving on it.
Shake off your fear of making
mistakes.

7. DECISION-MAKING
MENTAL HYGIENE
Be proactive and ask “how?”
instead of “why?”. For more
perspective, try to develop
empathy, accept failure, and
be both assertive and resilient.
Change your
approach
4

8. 5
DECISION-MAKING
MENTAL HYGIENE
Self-motivate
Intuition is more finely tuned in
areas you’ve mastered—and
also in areas that you're
passionate about. Work on it,
with enthusiasm.

9. 6
DECISION-MAKING
EXPANSION
Feeling like you have a knot in
your stomach may tell you
you're not heeding your
intuition in a decision.
Do what feels right

10. 7
DECISION-MAKING
You are more likely to try new
things when you're outside of
your routine, everyday
environment.
Spark your curiosity
EXPANSION

11. 8
DECISION-MAKING
Sensory games—e.g.,
identifying objects by touch or
finding hidden figures in a
picture—can help sharpen your
senses.
Stimulate your senses
EXPANSION

12. 9
DECISION-MAKING
Fly the coop
It’s important to leave your
comfort zone, break old
habits and get a change of
scenery to boost your
flexibility and creativity.
EXPANSION

13. 10
DECISION-MAKING
Creative games—e.g., relating
two random objects or
reframing questions—help
stimulate the right side of the
brain.
See things from a
new perspective
EXPANSION

14. 11
DECISION-MAKING
Techniques to train thinking—
such as Edward de Bono’s Six
Thinking Hats—help force our
brains to find implications that
may have been missed at first.
EXPANSION
Look beyond the
obvious

15. Innovate, explore,
and incorporate
12
DECISION-MAKING
Find new routes for resolving a
situation. Look out for
technologies, products or
processes that could be better
utilized.
EXPANSION

16. DECISION-MAKING
13
Build on your
experience
EXPANSION
Intuition is backed by
experience. Repeating
situations helps you turn
explicit knowledge into tacit
understanding.

17. 14
DECISION-MAKING
Stay up to date
If you don’t keep up with
the latest research,
projects and ideas,
intuition may become
merely guessing.
EXPANSION

18. 15
DECISION-MAKING
Educate yourself
Great discoveries and eureka
moments don’t happen by
chance; they come from
accumulated knowledge and
training.
EXPANSION

19. 16
DECISION-MAKING
Share intuitions with others;
incorporating others’ views can
improve your effectiveness and
lead to new insights.
Compare and contrast
EXPANSION

20. 17
DECISION-MAKING
To help us disconnect and let
ideas hatch, daydream and
practice quieting down the
conscious mind via exercises.
Incubate and
disconnect
DISCONNECTION

21. 18
DECISION-MAKING
Find out whether or not your
gut decisions have been
successful in the past to boost
your intuitive abilities.
Verify hunches
DISCONNECTION

22. 19
DECISION-MAKING
Support intuitive decisions with
logical explanations. Don’t just
recount how a decision was
made, explain why it was
made.
Learn to
communicate
DISCONNECTION

23. 20
DECISION-MAKING
Practice
Intuition improves with
practice. Apply new
learnings repeatedly to
make them more
accessible for future
decisions.
DISCONNECTION

24. Based on a method for making intuitive
decisions (known as “HAD” in Spanish)
developed by Isabel García-Méndez and
explained in a technical note written
with IESE professor Roberto García-
Castro.
Visit ieseinsight.com

25. LEARN MORE
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