As head of product at a big data company, I was obsessed with making data-driven decisions. In fact, one of our company values was somewhere along the lines of “data over intuition.” In reality, it was the hardest value to uphold.
By valuing data over intuition, we unknowingly paved the path for a breakdown in the most critical ingredient for a successful business: trust. Insights from data are rarely black-and-white; it takes a certain amount of listening to your gut to take a stand based on gray evidence.
As a result, the leadership team constantly faced grumblings of “where’s the data?” because no amount of data ever felt like enough to truly support a decision. Personally, I felt debilitated as I fought to ignore my intuition. The company at large felt misaligned with the core value, and resentment toward leadership because of it. We scrambled on hamster wheels of unsolvable problems, searching for evidence that would tell us exactly what to do.
Flash forward to some years later, when I sat in a coach training class and read the following foundation principle: “Faith is more powerful than proof.” I could feel in my body how aligned I was with this thought, and how empowering it felt. The power to decide was no longer down a rabbit hole. It was within me.
True innovation comes from a leader who is willing to trust herself especially when the facts are vague. And only when she is permitted to trust her own intuition will others trust her as well.
