The power of INTUITION in business

Did you recently experience simultaneous conflictual feelings towards a person or towards a situation? (Often referred to mixed feeling)

Think of your last week, it could have been a tiny situation in a day and yet that situation changed your state of mind for a moment. For example, you had a mixed feeling while and/or after:

• Coming in at work feeling some tention in the air;
• shaking the hand of someone;
• assessing a business deal;
• meeting someone new (a potential new employer, partner, client, employee...);
• discussing some issues or new ideas with a someone or a group;
• reading an e-mail, articles or documentations containing annoucements, a new idea, a new solution, a new issue...;
• participating to a meeting or conference.

Mixed feelings or INTUITION are revealing important information about a situation. I believe that INTUITION is our sixth sense. It can actually be very POWERFUL and USEFUL in business. A survey in 2006 conducted by PR WEEK indicated that 62% of CEO's that rely heavily on gut feeling or intuition. http://www.ehow.com/info_8361792_use-intuition-business-decision.html

Are you listening to your intuition?

Let's do something fun for a minute. take a sheet and a pen. Do two columns, write "INTUITION" on the left colomn and "BLACK OUT" on the right column. The INTUITION column will be for you to write situations where you actually followed your guts. The right one will be situations where you did not follow you gut feeling consciously. Think of good and "bad" decisions you made. Note the year of each situation. Write at least five elements of each column.

What are the outcomes?

So, how did it go? 

• Was it easy for you to identify situations where you had mixed feelings? Are you sensitive to your INTUITION?  
• Is it possible most of your "bad" decisions where made even if you had mixed feelings? (Their is no "bad" decisions - just learning experiences)
• Is it possible that you listen more your INTUITION today vs in the past? In the beggining of your career? 
• In which situations do you find yourself NOT listening to your INTUITION? 

How can you read better your INTUITION?

The only way you can read better your INTUITION is to take time for yourself to see how you really feel about a decision, about someone you just met. If it does NOT make you feel good, you need to digg in why. Don't let others decide or influence you if you are the decidor. Ask for advice but know that you are the one making the decision. If it does not FEEL right, no matter if you need a decision now to happen, it is better to say no and continue to search for solution. 

Often, we are too focused on the timeline of our decision and give up a bit on the quality of the decision. 

Your gut feeling, INTUITION will help you a lot... If you use it.

Boost your business with LOVE & HAPPINESS

Feel to check your company at the local medical clinic? 

What are the symptoms?

• The staff motivation is at zero? 
• Turn around is high?
• The financial numbers are just wrong?
• Objectives keep on being missed?
• Work environment is negative?

Is it possible that your company is going through a crisis? Your company is missing Vitamins? Antioxidants? Minerals?

It's time to turn this around!!! Change the MIND SET!

STEPS:

1. Infuse HAPPINESS everywhere in the company and all around you! Make it CONTAGEOUS!
2. Make an electro shock in the company! Surprise them, turn things around! Change habits! Surprise them - they have to get out of their comma! Do anything that will catch their full attention!
3. Now that you have their attention! Have a reality check with them! Make them understand that you are in the same boat! Each one needs to contribute to find solutions! We all have the problems and are all responsible to collectively resolve it! This is what a company is all about TEAM WORK
4. Make a plan on all angles with them, make sure that you have an organic plan and a plan that covers all angles of the company! This is truly the best time to reinvent yourself as a company! Your collective knowledge is what will save you!!! IT IS SO POWERFUL! It is a super power that we do not use enough typically.
5. HAVE FUN!!! Make it fun, people are there most if their time mind as well use it in a way that people will be happy to actually come to work! Light up their flamme in them so that they develop themselves and achieve their objectives.

HAPPY medication will boost your company to no end!

How to read beyond the numbers

Budget, Sales targets, Revenue enhancement, Cost compression, Profit & Loss, EBITDA, Stock value.... 

I have found that many companies juggle with numbers like if they were in a circus until no end. Numbers get to fall all over the place and become hardly trackable or reconcilable. Numbers are the common ground for communication in a business. Numbers take form of a language in a company, your staff need to be able to understand number and use them as a communication tool as well.

So how do we actually get numbers to make sense again?

If I do a genius plan, will I be able to transform those numbers into reality?

No, not necessarily. In the best intention, companies do assess their SWOT, they build a strategic plans in all aspects of their business (corporate, product or services, sales, marketing, operations, support, financial, HR, etc... All those strategies and plans part of the echo-system of a company are unfortunately NOT а garantее of success... even if all the numbers are aligned in all the plans of the company.

Like many of you, I have seen the strategies, plans and results of many companies from different industries. I have found many times that the best strategies and plans come up at the end to not drive at all with the results. There is often a big GAP between the strategy and plans end the bottom line actual numbers.

So if my plan is not as genius as I thought, what will a company usually do?

Execs typically make changes in the pyramid by appointing a new senior here and there or by calling up an external consultant to figure out what's wrong and why that strategies and plans failed. The new eyes comes in and say,

"let's redo the strategy and plans"

and the story just repeats itself... We hand out to have (again) numbers and measures everywhere!

What else can we do?

• Do we really take the time to develop the strategies and plans with the staff?
  Statistics show that strategies and plans are built most of the time without our most precious knowledge base~ our employees! Your staff is your diamond! A real treasure, your most precious asset. Too many companies develop the strategies and plans by externals resources or by people that do not have the content and reality of the business.


Are the numbers really understood by the staff and all?
Do we really use the collective knowledge we have as a company?Ensure that the collective knowledge is used and that your plans are built with your stakeholders and staff. The best realistic comprehensive plans are done when knowledge is coming from all stakeholders including your key employees - they are your gogethers, they are the ones really having the hands to make things happen.
• Are the strategies and plans developed in silot? Did we integrate the plans?
Are they integrated throughout the revenue cycle?

• Did we breakdown the numbers so that they make sense to our team?
  
• How much time do we set on developing the strategies and plans?
• Are they validated bottom-up and top-bottom?
• Do we have an engagement or comitment from all stakeholders? Do not think that your stakeholders are your exec committee.

In the essence, the objectives, the baseline numbers need to make sense for all parties and need to be REALISTIC. This is the only way that the numbers will actually drive and make sense to all.

The worst unrealistic plans are done by execs when working in stand alone.

So in the end. If you help your employees to read beyond the numbers and involve them in building the strategies and plans, it is a certainty that you will maximize your results and NUMBERS!

What are your thoughts?