Based on his insight into human problem solving, Herbert Simon wrote an article in which he defined intuition as "analyses frozen into habit." This definition stuck like a chicken bone in my throat. Having learned to discover the message in nagging images, I studied the article for challenges to my sense of intuitive knowing. Added emphasis appears in red, and my reactions are enclosed in a box: (Note 144)

We will be concerned, then, with the nonrational and the irrational components of managerial decision making and behavior. Our task, you might say, is to discover the reason that underlies unreason. . . .

The flaw in Simon's approach to intuitive knowing was revealed in his objective. To reduce intuition to rationality was "to throw the baby out with the bath water." Another popular aphorism states "If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." I once believed it was only a matter of time before computers would successfully emulate (equal or excel) human intelligence. How naive I was to assume the mind was a rote logical mechanism!

Most executives probably find Barnard's account of their decision processes persuasive; it captures their own feelings of how processes work. On the other hand, some students of management, especially those whose goal is to improve management decision processes, have felt less comfortable with it. It appears to vindicate snap judgments and to cast doubt on the relevance of management science tools, which almost all involve deliberation and calculation in decision making.

Barnard did not regard the nonlogical processes of decision as magical in any sense. On the contrary, he felt they were grounded in knowledge and experience. . . .

In some circumstances, knowledge and experience may stand in the way of rather than ground intuition. They may represent blinders to direct perception of present reality. We perceive and respond to situations in terms of what we have learned to be true or what our experience assures us is true. To the extent education and experience are distorted, they are not reliable guides to the present reality of a situation. Intuition should take us beyond the limits of our factual mind. To get at the essence of a situation, we may need to see in a way that is contrary to knowledge and experience.

Because I used logic (drawing conclusions from premises) as a central metaphor to describe the decision making process, many readers of Administrative Behavior have concluded that the theory advanced there applies only to "logical " decision making, not to decisions that involve intuition and judgment. That was certainly not my intent. But now, after nearly 50 years, the ambiguity can be resolved because we have acquired a solid understanding of what the judgmental and intuitive processes are. . . .

Rather than a solid understanding of intuition, our knowledge may have lessened from the perspective of the Eastern traditions. We have acquired a limited rational understanding of the intuitive experience when viewed as analyses frozen into habit. How does this concept compare with Yogananda's soul guidance, infallible counsel or inner voice idea of intuition? When viewing intuition as an aspect of a discerning rather than factual mind, reducing it to analyses frozen into habit trivializes our understanding.

I should like to examine this body of research, which falls under the labels of "cognitive science" and "artificial intelligence," to see what light it casts on intuitive, judgmental decision making in management. We will see that a rather detailed account can be given of the processes that underlie judgment, even though most of these processes are not within the conscious awareness of the actor using them. . . .

Critics of the achievements of cognitive science and artificial intelligence such as Dreyfus assert we cannot give a detailed account of the processes of intuition. They claim the achievements are not as impressive as their proponents would have us believe. The expected developments have consistently fallen short of the mark. I question whether examples of expert systems in technical fields such as engineering and medicine are as representative of management decision making as their proponents claim.

The grandmaster's memory holds more than a set of patterns. Associated with each pattern in his or her memory is information about the significance of that pattern - what dangers it holds, and what offensive or defensive moves it suggests. Recognizing the pattern brings to the grandmaster's mind at once moves that may be appropriate to the situation. It is this recognition that enables the professional to play very strong chess at a rapid rate. Previous learning that has stored the patterns and the information associated with them in memory makes this performance possible. This, then, is the secret of the grandmaster's intuition or judgment. . . .

Is chess the relevant metaphor for management decision? Why not yogins instead of chess masters? Though it may be an adequate model for the factual mind, the if then, premise conclusion form of pattern recognition may not be relevant for processes of the discerning mind. The outer directed skills of processing cues and matching patterns may not be the inner oriented art needed to access transcendent modes of knowing. Calming the mind so that it can view reality without distortion may be more important than cues and patterns. The point of settling the mind is to set aside the distorting influence of habitual patterns acquired through experience and education.

Marius J. Bouwman has constructed a computer program capable of detecting company problems from an examination of accounting statements. The program was modeled on detailed thinking aloud protocols of experienced financial analysts intepreting such statements, and it captures the knowledge that enables analysts to spot problems intuitively, usually at a very rapid rate. When a comparison is made between the responses of the program and the responses of an expert human financial analyst, a close match is usually found. . . .

Since language is inherently linear, thinking aloud protocols may not capture the essence of intuitive processes. The use of a particular language carries assumptions about the nature of reality in its structure. The map is not the territory. The aboriginal shaman and the western manager have different world views implicit in their languages. A shaman's narration of selecting a treatment for a patient and a manager's description of choosing a response to a business problem would be couched in language specific terms.

The shaman might speak of synchronistic coincidences while the manger might talk in terms of cause and effect. Though both are deciding intuitively, their description may be incomprehensible in the other's language. It would be ethnocentric to assert the manger's representation was better than the aborigine's or vice versa. The aborigines might be more accurate since they are not limited by the blinders of scientific thinking. One of the great fallacies of western science is that it has THE answers.

From this and other research on expert problem solving and decision making, we can draw two main conclusions. First, experts often arrive at problem diagnoses and solutions rapidly and intuitively without being able to report how they attained the result. Second, this ability is best explained by postulating a recognition and retrieval process that employs a large number - generally tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands - of chunks or patterns stored in long term memory. . . .

Rather than postulate a recognition and retrieval process employing hundreds of thousands of patterns stored in long term memory, we might hypothesize a process that bypasses long term memory to access deeper archetypal levels of knowing. Rather than specify knowledge and recognition capabilities to develop, we might identify processing habits to unlearn and kinds of knowledge to set aside to access the intuitive source. We might postulate that managers had everything they needed to make effective and efficient decisions before their minds were clouded by the distortions of education and experience. The childlike clarity of perceiving things as they are might be the window to effective decision making.

What managers know they should do - whether by analysis or intuitively - is very often different from what they actually do. A common failure of managers, which all of us have observed, is the postponement of difficult decisions. What is it that makes decisions difficult and hence tends to cause postponement? Often, the problem is that all of the alternatives have undesired consequences. When people have to choose the lesser of two evils, they do not simply behave like Bayesian statisticians, weighing the bad against the worse in the light of their respective possibilities. Instead, they avoid the decision, searching for alternatives that do not have negative outcomes. . . .

Dysfunctional shadow behavior might be a more fundamental model for explaining the difference between what managers do and know they should do than explanations of postponing decisions due to unpleasant decision outcomes. The latter explanation assumes a manager knows objectively what the outcomes will be. This would not be true of managers in most situations. On the contrary, they are often guided by fear of ego shattering or desire for ego enhancing experiences. Learned dysfunctional response patterns might stand more in the way than be a source of intuitive knowing.

What all of these decision making situations have in common is stress, a powerful force that can divert behavior from the urgings of reason. They are examples of a much broader class of situations in which managers frequently behave in clearly nonproductive ways. Nonproductive responses are especially common when actions have to be made under time pressure. The need to allay feelings of guilt, anxiety, and embarrassment may lead to behavior that produces temporary personal comfort at the expense of bad long run consequences for the organization. . . .

Stress not only diverts behavior from the urgings of reason, but passion as well. Viewing passion as the energy inherent in life rather than a dysfunctional emotion, we can sense the complementary need for balancing the urgings of reason and passion. Kahil Gibran stated this eloquently: "Your reason and your passion are the rudder and sails of your seafaring soul." The managers' seafaring soul navigates the ocean of organizational decision making. In learning to manage stress, we should take care not to snuff out passion while bringing stress under control. Passion drives an organization's creative response to complex and rapidly changing situations.

Behavior of this kind is "intuitive" in the sense that it represents response without careful analysis and calculation. Lying, for example, is much more often the result of panic than of Machiavellian scheming. The intuition of the emotion driven manager is very different from the intuition of the expert whom we discussed earlier. The latter's behavior is the product of learning and experience, and is largely adaptive; the former's behavior is a response to more primitive urges, and is more often than not inappropriate. We must not confuse the "nonrational" decisions of the experts - the decisions that derive from expert intuition and judgment - with the irrational decisions that stressful emotions may produce. . . .

Describing guilt and anxiety allaying behavior as intuitive maligns this innate process. Irrational or dysfunctional might be more appropriate. Such behavior is irrational because it occurs without intuitive knowing rather than because it is done without careful analysis and calculation. Perhaps more than other management situations, those involving stressful emotions need intuitive responses. Counterproductive behavior can gradually become productive when guided by managers' wisdom from the deeper archetypal levels of knowing.

These principles are as obvious as the Ten Commandments and perhaps not quite as difficult to obey. Earlier, I indicated that stress might cause departures from them, but failure to respond effectively to problems probably derives more from a lack of attention and an earlier failure to cultivate the appropriate habits. The military makes much use of a procedure called "Estimate of the Situation." Its value is not that it teaches anything esoteric, but that through continual training in its use, commanders become habituated to approaching situations in orderly ways, using the checklists provided by the formal procedure. . . .

Developing flexibility and openness might be more useful for enhancing intuitive ability than becoming habituated to orderly ways. Habits of education and experience might stand more in the way of wise intuitive choices than aiding them. To see each situation as if for the first time is more characteristic of an intuitive response than habitual behavior. Ritualistic responses of habits of attention are inappropriate in situations requiring a fresh view. To see a situation anew helps ensure past patterns will not detract from the solution inherent in each situation. Zen describes this attitude as the "beginner's mind."

It is a fallacy to contrast "analytic" and "intuitive" styles of management. Intuition and judgment - at least good judgment - are simply analyses frozen into habit and into the capacity for rapid response through recognition. Every manager needs to be able to analyze problems systematically (and with the aid of the modern arsenal of analytical tools provided by management science and operations research). Every manager needs also to be able to respond to situations rapidly, a skill that requires the cultivation of intuition and judgment over many years of experience and training. The effective manager does not have the luxury of choosing between "analytic" and "intuitive" approaches to problems. Behaving like a manager means having command of the whole range of management skills and applying them as they become appropriate.

I agree wholeheartedly that it is a fallacy to contrast the two styles, but I could not disagree more that intuition is "simply analyses frozen into habit." As Dreyfus has argued, this statement does not do justice even to intuition in the small. Intuition in the large has no room in such a belief system. This idea of intuition reduces the human spirit to a logical program of if then responses to life. What a cold, heartless notion of what it means to be human. I learned that is not uncharacteristic of the mechanistic M-1 world view.

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