The Recruitment of Intuitive Managers

Abstract

French scientist, Alexis Carrel said, “All great men are gifted with intuition. They know without reasoning or analysis, what they need to know.” Studies among leaders confirm this and underscore the value of developing intuition. Business is all about rational, orderly systems for strategic planning, decision-making, forecasts, operations, budgeting, supervision and control, production and practically every other facet of an organisation. Under rising pressure and ambiguity, rational thinking may not perform satisfactorily. In the context of management decision-making, research conducted by Nutt (1999) reveals that rational/logic based strategies struggle to reach the fifty percent success mark. Business leaders the world over are acknowledging that many important decisions, and career choices are increasingly based on intuition or gut feel. The recruitment of highly intuitive managers can enable organisations to tackle contexts and issues thrown up by the challenges of this century. To identify managers with high levels of intuition is, therefore, a necessary step. Validated and reliable tests are available to measure intuition in managers. The paper further suggests ways to fine tune the process to recruit intuitive managers.

Keywords: Intuition, Recruitment, Management, Intuitive thinking, Intuitive decision making, CSI, REI.