Intuition – Core Competency for the Creative Age

The next time you go outside take a look at the businesses, stores, homes, transport and ask yourself this “How else could this have looked?”

If we look into the road to the future, it’s clear we’ll be relying less on past precedent and more on imagination.  History is not a reliable view of the future.

The kind of thinking that will drive progress is radically different than before. Those who thrive will be masters of the unprecedented. Personal competencies in intuition, vision and imagination are now required creative skills.

Intuition – The New Common Sense

Intuition is defined as knowledge and intelligence that doesn’t occur as a direct result of thinking. Instead intuition occurs as effortless insight that arises suddenly and reveals clarity with precision. It is non-linear and relates to a type of “common sense” that remains curiously untaught among the intellectual and critical thinking preferences of our current education and corporate training environment.

Common sense is what drove our ancestors to survive the ruggedness and weather conditions to establish what North America is today. This was a visceral common sense, relating more to physical survival in a hostile changing environment.

In our current environment, much more a mental one, multiple priorities and urgencies compete for our “attention”. However, “attention” in its’ purest sense is what most of us now do poorly.

The “new common sense” of intuition looks more like visionary adeptness, clarifying sense out of information garbage, the ability to out-think our intellectual intelligence and out-smart our brain stem. Intuition makes us less subject to being a victim of our intellect. And it opens doors to creative brilliance.

Through intuition we can “unthink” the paradigm of work, work as effort. There are easier ways.

We’re Smarter Than We Think

We can’t create our future in the same way as we arrived here. We’re creating a generation of knowledge and communication workers and we’re still trying to impose on them a “factory” mentality that was designed to produce widgets in an industrial age rather than results in our time. To produce results today, both insight and vision are needed and people have to be inspired before that can be produced. It’s the inspired person who will go the extra step, see the higher potential, build a better client relationship. The tricky part is they have to be inspired from the inside. You can’t impose this on anyone.

We’ve been investing in people solely to benefit economic performance to the exasperation of new cultural realities. Organizations are leaner and meaner than ever and key personnel are more stressed. Few of today’s organizations can say they have an energized creative force.

Business models and the ecology of business are rapidly changing. New and future models will need to better connect human performance, sustainability, social impact and profit.

All invention starts with ideas. Whole ideas are realized by whole people. To date we’ve invested little on cultivating inner skills like intuition, vision and implicit intelligence. The investment impact of developing these skills are increased engagement, cultural cohesion and the dynamics to create more purposeful results. 

Back to intuition. Yes, it does restore personal power and vision. But what’s the downside?  Some talented people will leave to explore their own visions. Others will come because they’re attracted to your vision. But there’s a catch here too. Your corporate vision needs to be compelling enough to invite them in.

Personal commitment is needed to create and sustain the success and progress of your organization. This commitment comes in all different shapes, sizes and people. There is room for all kinds.

Individuals need to be willing and able to state their commitment to an organization without fear of judgement, and the organization needs an intention to find the right fit.

I’m always asked if it’s possible to actually “train” the intuition?” The answer is “Yes.” It’s more about reconditioning your senses so they can work the way they were designed. Critical thinking has done a remarkable hack job on cutting friction because for the most part we can agree on what the problems and values are. 

But we’ve limited both full intelligence & possibility by cutting out intuition and feelings. And these will both be required to maintain an intact and attractive people culture.

Like to learn how to turn on your intuition & get fast insight? Check out Intuition MindWare training here.