Natalie Nixon

I started observing the role of intuition and strategic decision-making when I was a professor of the Strategic Design MBA program.

We would invite in startup leaders on our Friday night design and dine evenings.

And to a successful startup leader, when they would be sharing their origin story, there was always this moment when they would say, something told me not to do the deal, or something told me to work with her and not him.

And I kept hearing that something told me so often, I thought, I think that something is intuition, but we don't touch intuition in business school and medical school and law school.

Every successful leader has those moments, those inflection points.

So

What's really exciting is now that there is more neuroscience research studies that I write about in Move, Think, Rest that show the connection between intuition and strategic decision-making.

So there is a study, I think it was...

I'm gonna get the date wrong, so I'm not gonna say the date, but there was a study that's called the heartbeat detection experiment.

And it's really looking at something called interoception.

So as humans, we are sense-making sentient beings.

We have something called proprioception, which is your awareness of where you are in space.

And we have something called interoception, which is your awareness of your inner state of being.

So proprioception, dancers are really good at proprioception or skateboarders are really good at birds that can like zoom through the sky and like nail landing on a branch through a thicket of, of, of, of barbed branches.

Right.

They're really good at proprioception.

Interoception is I'm cold.

I'm hot.

I'm tired.

I feel safe.