User:JoshuaInspiring/Intuition-based System of Management

this is my first wiki article, please be patient as I'm learning the system. needs help with citation format ??

Hope with this article is to make a _nuanced_ as well as balanced description of a culturally widely disbelieved phenomenon, the everyday relevance of intuitive thinking for bottom-line decision-making. Thanks for patience and help. Note--wikipedia has an instance of hte term "intuition-based system of management" referring to its own system of managing editors, and this term is not defined. I think what was meant was "laissez-faire" or "popular agreement-based" or "common sense-based," rather than intuition-based. This is representative of the culturally prevailing view of intuition as fuzzy and unreliable. It seems Wikipedia understands "intuition-based system of management" as simply the opposite of whatever an evidence-based system would be. There's a third thing that needs to be defined here: evidence-based, common-sense-based, and intuition-based. Intuition-based system of management actually describes more closely the thing those who coined the term (Kurt and Patricia Wright) originally meant by it--a whole-brained rather than left-brained system of management.

'''Intuition-based System of Management '''

A way of managing a project or business--or a way of decision-making--that allows fuller access to the intuitive brain's input than is culturally normal the West at this time.

The term was invented by two business consultants, Patricia Wright and Kurt Wright, and described in their book Breaking the Rules (Breaking the Rules, Clear Purpose Management Publishing, 1989). Their book describes the thought-process of effortless high performers. Effortless high performers as such have existed throughout history, but they claim to have described for the first time the general process by which they think. Building on the work of neuroscientist Roger Sperry, the Wrights claim to have explained the way these thinkers thought in terms of two independent brain systems, and that these thinkers themselves never explained their own thought process in quite this way, focusing on the questions they asked themselves.

According to the Wrights, the intuitive brain processes 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than the conscious, analytical brain, replenishes emotional energy when it processes a question, and, most importantly, cannot be deceived (ibid., p.85). The analytical brain, on the other hand, when entirely disconnected from the intuitive brain's input, cannot tell truth from fiction (ibid., p. 85; source for these particular findings in Sperry's work could not be found on-line). Other sources corroborate the idea that the "intuitive brain" can produce "eureka" moment insights. The Eureka Hunt (Johan Lehrer, The New Yorker, July 28, 2008, pp. 40-45) describes Jung-Beerman's work observing, among other things, an explosion of activity in the "anterior superior temporal gyrus" a few seconds before the insight arrives—-a few seconds before the subject knows that she/he was about to have an insight that solved a logic problem. This indicates that unconscious mental processing is at work that produces a verifiable result. Most popularly, Malcolm Gladwell's _Blink_ describes major decisions made in an instant, some of which were more valid than slower, conscious decisions (Gladwell, Malcolm, Blink. .  [More citations requested.]

Using their system of asking properly framed questions to access the intuitive brain's input, the authors successfully enabled a glass plant to increase its yield from 70% to 90% (ibid., 140-145), bringing it from the break-even point to making $24 million in profits per year; and saved a computer company $45,000,000 (ibid., p. 18).

Means for obtaining the above results include changing the questions, both conscious and unconscious, that workers asked themselves. The Wrights did this by creating a high-trust environment in which persons were free to finish fully feeling their feelings and putting their deepest feelings into words, thus reaping the benefits of insights that would normally be glossed over. Also discussed is the "mentor-coaching relationship" in which one person asks feeling-based questions and listens without judgment, while the other party answers, practicing verbalizing subtle feelings.

Critics of application of new neuroscientific findings to problems outside the realm of neuroscience--mostly neuroscientists themselves--have stated that the popular media wants to oversimplify and exaggerate the significance of brain lateralization (source needed). From a business standpoint, however, it can be argued that the bottom-line results and the happiness of the workers are what matters, and any understanding of the mechanics of how this result comes about is valid enough if it is practical and measurably effective.

The viewpoints in the work are easily forgotten after one is done reading--perhaps owing to the deceivability of the conscious, analytical brain, and the societal preponderance of an attitude of hasty mistrust of any new paradigm that threatens widely held assumptions--and that nearly everyone who reads the book mentally edits the contents when attempting to describe it to others, thus leaving out essential details. It is that reader's opinion that such distortions in translation account for the slow pace of the spread of this paradigm in thinking. Further, many in the popular media and the business world have attempted to turn findings from neuroscience and especially brain lateralization findings into get-rich-quick offerings, which may distract public discussion from subtler and more evidence-based results, and inhibit these results' being reproduced more widely. The Wrights observe, similarly, that the intuitive brain is very "shy" and when it is uncomfortable it tends to hide, like a prairie dog popping down into its hole (Op. Cit., 90-91). This "shyness" could explain why, even after Federal Express and Boeing took notice of the Wright's work, it has not become the dominant paradigm in the corporate world yet, nor outside of it.

Questions are free and consume no natural resources to put forth. People ask themselves questions every minute of the day. If the questions that people ask themselves can deplete or replenish emotional energy, and lead to or away from clear perception of facts, then it makes sense for everyone to examine the questions she/he is asking him/herself, and experimenting with changing those questions that contain groundless assumptions or restrict processing to only one half of the mind. It seems possible that educators, artists, activists, theologians, politicians, technicians, and even farmers could benefit from a system of decision making that allows for an increase in material productivity and savings in wasted effort, as well as improvement of mood.

Wright, Kurt. Breaking the Rules. (Clear Purpose Management Publishing, 1989)

Gladwell, Malcolm, Blink. (New York: Little, Brown, 2005)

Johan Lehrer, The New Yorker, July 28, 2008, pp. 40-45

source needed: Roger Sperry: study that either shows that the left brain in commissectomy patients unable to distinguish truth from fiction, or could be misconstrued to show this