While we all value formal learning experiences (in a school or university setting), there is also universal acceptance that many of life's most important lessons are learned outside the walls of these institutions. Our culture is full of Mark Twain classics such as, "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education," expressions referring to life as the "school of hard knocks," and T-shirts bearing the words "Real Life University."

Here are just a few of life's trials and tribulations:

• Living through a natural disaster; being humbled by the power of nature and our relative impotence
• Suffering physical injury from a natural disaster; witnessing the devastating effects on others
• Witnessing how others respond to disaster
• Having a life and death experience such as a car accident
• Firing someone
• Being fired

• Being the victim of a crime
• Knowing someone who has been a crime victim
• Suffering the loss of an immediate family member or close friend
• Witnessing poverty
• Visiting multiple countries and being exposed to multiple languages and cultures
• Dealing with an unexpected pregnancy
• Supporting a spouse with a long term disability or disease

Living through these experiences is never pleasant. Nevertheless, after the fact we often realize we've grown in maturity and wisdom. Life's experiences, however difficult at the time, can be a positive influence on us, shaping our character, and altering the way we view the world and our place in it, including our behavior toward others. Depending on the nature of the trauma, our innate character, and the support we receive from friends, family, and society as a whole, this shaping may be positive or negative. We may come out of a near death experience with greater appreciation of life and love, or we may emerge bitter and angry.

Ideally, we are able to turn any of life's experiences (pleasant or unpleasant) into greater self-awareness, and to expand our horizons and comfort zones. While we may not yearn to be in a war-zone, if caught up in such a situation, the perspective we gain can be very important to our understanding of the world and to subsequent contributions we can make to society. Thus, we should strive to view all experiences as opportunities to learn and grow.Enlightened leaders orient their organizations in ways that encourage the compilation of life experiences. Allowing a corporation's employees to rotate through the marketing, sales, manufacturing, and information technology departments widens their experience bases, as do diverse geographic postings. Army officers may be posted to different units (engineering, logistics, combat support, combat operations) or even given on loan to different branches (navy, air force). Teachers may be encouraged to teach children in various age groups, from kindergarten to high school. Artists may indulge in a wide variety of artistic media: oil painting, chalk drawing, bronze casting, and water coloring. Individuals can create their own diverse experiences by travelling the world, studying other cultures, engaging in different jobs, and volunteering for community service.

Note: references for this section are coded within square brackets. The complete citations may be found here.

Intuition

Intuition refers to the quick insight or perception of truth which is not a direct result of a rational and structured thought process. Other words for intuition include: gut instinct, professional judgment, inner voice, prescience, sixth sense, and hunch.

Many people are surprised when they discover the scientific consensus regarding intuition. Far from being a magical capability, intuition boils down to nothing other than pattern recognition. This message is disappointing to some, and a small subset appears doomed to resist the evidence. Nevertheless, the romantic view of intuition must give way to objective science.

Alden M. Hayashi, in HBR, states that "Various studies of experts in diverse fields...have confirmed that professional judgment can often be reduced to patterns and rules" [HBR page 180]. He goes on to cite Herbert Simon's contention that "intuition and judgment are simply analyses frozen into habit." [HBR page 181], and "we found that what distinguishes experts is that they have very good encyclopedias [in their heads] that are indexed, and pattern recognition is that index." [HBR page 181]

An important aspect of life experiences, and the reason they are presented here alongside the concept of intuition, is that they help to build the patterns and experiences which underlie intuition. Knowing what intuition is provides us with a road map of sorts to developing people's intuituion and hence decision making quality.

Bob Lutz, a former Chrysler president, is quoted "I find that in general management, people with varied and diverse backgrounds are, all other things being equal, going to probably be more valuable and will learn faster because they'll recognize more patterns." [HBR page 183]

An important aspect of life experiences is that they help to build the patterns and experiences which underlie intuition.

Before we get too excited about intuition, however, it must be noted that intuition offers benefits but also potential problems in decision making. These barriers to decision making mean that we must recognize that intuition is not foolproof.

Intuition Development

Development of intuition is a critical element of anyone's preparation for life's decisions, and even more so for those leaders whose decisions have great impact on the lives of others. Knowing that intuition is all about pattern recognition makes it clear that the way forward is to expose people to more experiences, in as efficient a way as possible. In other words, the idea is to create a large database of stored patterns which they can draw upon.

Humanity has practiced this for centuries, through apprenticeships, which give novices exposure (often intensely) to broad and deep experiences, alongside a knowledgeable mentor, who can interpret events and outcomes. One modern-day apprenticeship example is the mechanism of internships which all medical school graduates must endure, another is the process used to train plumbers and other tradesmen. As an aside, most businesses are not very good at such apprenticeships, often because the number and patience of willing mentors is limited.

In order to provide an intense and ongoing exposure to a variety of experiences, we can draw on both low and high technology. Cockpit simulations used to train and assess pilots are examples of the latter. Mental simulations are an example of the former. High-tech simulations provide some significant advantages. They can be controlled more precisely and their intensity may be monitored even more than real life events. A good simulation may also be saved, replayed and analyzed, for maximum learning and benefit.

The lower tech mental simulation, "the ability to imagine people and objects consciously and to transform those people and objects through several transitions, finally picturing them in a different way than at the start," [SOP p45] has the advantage that it costs very little, and can be administered in almost any circumstance.

"Mental simulation serves several functions in non-routine decision making. It helps us to explain the cues and information we have received so we figure out how to interpret a situation and diagnose a problem. It helps us to generate expectancies ... and it lets us evaluate a course of action by searching for pitfalls." [SOP p89]

Mental simulations can be used to explain realized outcomes or past events. They can also be used to project hypothetically into the future. Future simulation exercises can be useful for thinking through a process or sequence of plausible events and deciding how to handle a variety of potential outcomes. It is important not to fall in love with any one projected scenario, or for that matter, any one sequence explaining an historical event: in reality, none of these may come about. The effort made in thinking through a sequence and potential actions, however, can be useful for placing some patterns into memory.

A more advanced exercise is to instruct a person to create a simulated sequence explaining an historical event, and then tell her that it is wrong, without elaborating. She must then take a fresh look at potential weaknesses and adjust as she sees fit, forcing her to take a fresh look.

Gary Klein [SOP] suggests that it's not practical to try to teach novices to think like experts because they are not experts. The focus then shifts to: how do experts learn?

Paraphrasing Klein 1997, experts learn by:

• Engaging in deliberate practice, including explicit goal and evaluation criteria
• Compiling an extensive experience bank
• Obtaining timely, accurate and diagnostic feedback
• Reviewing prior experiences to make the most of the rich information they contain, seeking new insights

In addition to apprenticeships and simulations, stories can be used to provide listeners with vicarious experiences, exposing them to lessons learned by experts who have walked a similar path before them. Klein [SOP] points out that "we like to hear good stories retold. What is more interesting is our need to tell stories, again and again. Each telling helps us understand more about the lessons embedded in the story."

Psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists have consistently concluded that storytelling is a crucial component in human culture. For millennia, storytelling was the dominant method for transferring knowledge across peers and through generations. There is also reason to believe that from a brain-wiring perspective, we remember stories more effectively than odd bits of unrelated information. Storytelling is useful for the audience as well as the narrator, who must think about how to deliver a message. It must be noted, however, that stories have some weaknesses as an educational medium. "The limitation of a story, which makes it nonscientific, is that no one has controlled the conditions. If you hear a story, you do not know if you have been given all of the relevant causal factors." [SOP p182]

Of course, intuition can be wrong, which means we must not allow ourselves to become complacent, blindly believing in our ability to arrive at correct decisions based solely on gut feel.

A final cautionary comment about conditions under which we are less likely to build up expertise and intuition, even with repeated exposure. We are less likely to succeed when:

• The domain is dynamic (rapidly changing)
• We have to predict human behavior
• We have less chance for feedback
• There isn't enough repetition to yield typicality
• We have fewer trials

Source: SOP, attributed to Shanteau, Jim. "Competence in Experts: The Role of Task Characteristics." Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 53, pp. 252-266, 1992.

Note: references for this section are coded within square brackets. The complete citations may be found here.