Make business decisions based on data and intuition

A CFO telling you not to worship exclusively your data to make your strategic decisions.

What am I, crazy? For sure, that statement won’t make me very popular among my peers.

Now let’s be clear. You should absolutely focus on reliable data.

But here is a little secret. Everyone knows about it but nobody will tell you.

It actually never is the only factor. And maybe this is not even the first factor.

Many companies, large or small, use instinct more than you think.

It even was the main factor for a company to become one of the most successful of all time.

Did you guess which company I’m talking about here?

Exactly. APPLE. During Steve’s reign (obviously).

How many other companies could say they changed your life and mine? Not so many.

Hard to believe the main driver of it all was one man’s intuition.

Grab your popcorn and hear how.

This is mid-2000s, remember?

The mobile phone market was dominated by dinosaurs such as Nokia & Blackberry. These giants focused on physical keyboards.

But Steve didn’t buy it. He trusted his intuition. He believed consumers wanted a more integrated and user-friendly device. A touch-screen interface.

Something that combined a phone, an iPod, and an internet communicator. The real beast.

What the market research had to say about it? “consumers prefer physical keyboards”.

But instead, Steve chose to trust his guts.

What happened next?

• The iphone transformed the mobile phone industry.

• Apple became one of the most valuable and influential companies in the world.

• The app economy started to develop.

A similar thing happened for the Ipad. The market data said: “limited consumer interest”.

But Steve had this vision of a device that filled the gap between a smartphone and a laptop.

Analysts were not on board though. He did it anyways.

Result?

• The iPad quickly became a success.

• It even created a new product category.

Those are pretty cool examples of how trusting vision and instinct over conventional market data could lead to remarkable success.

Now, please don’t be offended by what I’m about to say. But not everyone is Steve Jobs.

A balanced approach is the safest.

One that trusts data but also allows intuition to guide through major decisions (as a complement).

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