There’s Still a Place for “Gut Instinct” With Big Data

As businesses have gravitated toward the idea of using big data analytics tools to drive their most important decisions, many have wondered what roles personal feelings, intuition, and the ever elusive gut instinct play in the whole process. After all, weve become a world thats increasingly driven by what the numbers tell us. The more the pendulum has swung in this direction, the more it feels like relying upon your personal judgment seems outdated and could lead businesses to disaster.

Big data is everywhere these days, and it feels like it tells us more about whats happening and what will happening than anything that ever came before. While big data is still an important part of the equation, discounting gut instinct could end up being an unwise strategic choice. Theres a lot more at play here than just numbers and facts.

Much of the debate surrounding gut instinct was kicked up again after comments made by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings grabbed peoples attention. Hastingss comments were made at a DLD European conference in Germany and touched off a round of discussion over where gut instinct fits into the big data picture. Hastings described how the final decisions he makes still came down to what his gut tells him, though those decisions always started with what the data would show. He referred to it as informed intuition, a fairly incisive way to describe how business leaders should balance their decision making between the big data they collect and their own judgment on the situation.

Indeed the one or the other approach is simply the wrong way to think about the subject. Its a false choice since neither one cancels out the other. Both can be valuable in the decision making process. Basing all decisions off of data could be just as painful as basing all decisions on a gut instinct.

As Hastings pointed out, every good decision making strategy should be built on a foundation of data. Even though Netflix spends a lot of its money on big data investments, its telling that the CEO still trusts his intuition in the face of important business decisions. The hybrid approach — sometimes referred to as data-informed gut decisions — has proven to be an effective way of combining both worlds.

Its easy to see why being overly reliant on gut instinct can take business leaders down the wrong path. How often do gut feelings turn out to be wrong, anyway? But its not as easy to explain why only relying on big data can be a recipe for failure. After all, doesnt big data simply reflect how the world really is? In a sense, that may be the case, but data science can only go so far. So much of the world around us cant be boiled down to simple numbers, facts, and figures.

Take the hiring process as an example. Using a big data analytics approach, a company can collect data on possible candidates and simply hire based off of what the numbers reveal, but so much more can be revealed in a personal interview, such as how good of a fit someone would be at the company from a culture standpoint. If anything, data should be used to narrow down the field of candidates to a select few, but after that, intuition and gut instinct would probably work best in picking the right person for the job.

Data analytics can also be subject to certain blindspots. Since big data insights are meant to pick up on certain trends and patterns, outliers may be ignored for the most part. Yet, those outliers could eventually lead to even greater success as a company pursues new ground in ways they probably wouldnt have discovered had they relied solely on big data. In these cases, business leaders have to trust their own judgment. It might not be a guarantee for success, but neither is simply following what the data tells them.

Ultimately, the right way to make a decision is to use both big data and gut instinct. Those saying that intuition no longer has a part to play in business are simply mistaken. Big data solutions are plentiful, but the latest technology cant always replace the human mind (at least not yet). A business that uses personal judgment and big data analytics is a healthy one capable of utilizing all their resources to provide for more success in the future.