“A lot of times, the biggest decisions in life are made around very small pragmatic issues.”

— Stephane Fitch

Building and executing a strategy is all about the decisions you make. You have to decide on the big picture goals and then make choices to determine how you get there. Each step, big or small, is critical. Whether you’re solo or moving forward as a team, you want to ensure that every resolution is the right one. 

So what do you trust? Your instincts and intuition, a.k.a. your gut? Or do you rely on data and factual evidence to inform your next move?

On the Strategic Momentum Podcast, a number of guests have shared their thoughts on this issue, stemming from professional experiences, academic research, and personal observations. We’ve curated the following  advice to help you navigate decision-making in your career and beyond. 

Do you have more tips to add? Share in the comments below! 👇

Trusting Your Gut

1. “When we focus too much on the numbers, we lose the gut; We lose our our human instincts because we're over analyzing numbers.” — Dana Cavalea

2. “We ignore the fact that gut decisions have more data than anything we could put on paper.” — Dr. Mary Lamia

3. “We give primacy to cognition because we don't trust our gut, and we don't trust our gut because we don't understand its language.” — Dr. Mary Lamia

Understanding Emotions

1. “Our emotions are behind all of the sensations that are considered to be gut intuition. But the meaning we give to any intuitive sense is a contribution of our cognitive system.” — Dr. Mary Lamia

2. “Our emotions amplify what's going on at the moment and our cognition transforms the emotion to provide further information. ” — Dr. Mary Lamia

Leveraging Data (Mindfully)

1. “Data in and of itself it isn't so valuable, but the analysis of the data will either make or break good decisions.” — Kyle Loudermilk

2. “Overly relying on gut is also overly relying on your own biases that you bring to the table.” — Steve Brown

3. “Data is great for identifying patterns, but at the end of the day, a human has to connect with another human to service the customer, to make a sale, to pitch that investor. There has to be that human connection, and you have to be making decisions that you believe in.” — Steve Brown

4. “Ask the right questions and think about what you want to know instead of always advocating for a particular point of view - it can be pretty powerful in business and not necessarily something that we do enough of.” — Jen McDonald

5. “Put data in context and in more of a story, instead of just being dogmatic about it.” — Jen McDonald

Combining Gut and Data

1. “Sometimes it's about kind of focusing on even just one data point that you want to move on and then using your intuition and gut on how to make that happen.” — Jen McDonald

2. “Just building more life experience provides more perspectives...so I think that has allowed me to have better insight through analyzing data. So to the extent that there's a gut, at least it's an informed gut decision based on some type of analytics and facts.” — Kyle Loudermilk

3. “You've got to take the best of both: Take the non-biased insights that you get from data and then combine that with your gut-level thinking, doing what you know to be right.” — Steve Brown

4. “I've seen clients and even people that I've worked with become paralyzed with all of these data points. Sometimes they’re pointing you in a really clear direction, but a lot of times it’s narrowing your field and it's not really telling you exactly which way to go. That's where you really have to take some level of intuition and a leap of faith on what to focus on to get to the next level.” — Jen McDonald

Making Decisions Collaboratively 

1. “There may be instances where your gut and data are telling you something different than somebody above you...if that becomes a repeated scenario where [the decision] is perpendicular to what you think to be the right direction...and to your values then you need to reconsider if that’s the right place for you.” — Steve Brown

2. “Ask enough questions to really understand what's behind their gut.” — Jen McDonald

3. “Leaders become leaders over time because they have developed a good sense of gut-based decision making so you need to trust that in the beginning but if [making the wrong decision] becomes a recurring pattern, you may need to consider being somewhere else.” — Steve Brown