CXO Challenge #4. Should I trust data or intuition?
Kyndryl CMO UK&I MariCarmen Ribes Espinosa and WPP’s Chief AI Officer Daniel Hulme explain why your head and your heart are both right and wrong. But not always in the same way or at the same time.
For Daniel Hulme, the challenge is recognising when instinct is helpful and when it is a hindrance. “There are lots and lots of examples where relying on your gut or intuition is wrong.” Likewise, there are times when intuition is precisely what is needed. The difficulty lies in telling which type of decision you are facing.
A trillion is too much
That becomes more important as complexity increases. “If I have 15 people to allocate to 15 jobs, there are now a trillion possible solutions.” At that point, intuition ceases to be useful and becomes a limitation. Some problems are simply too vast for the human brain to solve effectively, and that’s where algorithms find their place.
Big decisions demand data
MariCarmen Ribes Espinosa offers a more personal perspective. “I have had moments in my life where I have followed my gut instinct,” she says. But for bigger decisions, instinct alone isn’t sufficient. “I’m quite a rational decision-maker as well.”
So this isn’t a debate between data and intuition. It’s a question of balance.
As Daniel states, it’s about “figuring out what are the right approaches to solving the right problems.” And as MariCarmen suggests, finding “the right moment for each one of both.”
Watch the rest of the CXO Challenges series on our insights page.
