Gut or Data for Decision-Making?

As a business leader or #founder which is the most useful for making decisions, intuition or data? Qualitative ‘gut’ feel or quantitative ‘data-driven’ clarity?

The Ammophila wasp deposits her eggs in paralyzed victims - beetles, spiders, caterpillars - to ensure the survival of her species.

In selecting the right nerve to paralyze (on the body of the victim), even as there are varying shapes and sizes of host, the Ammophila wasp has to be perfectly precise to avoid killing the victim.

This sting happens with incredible speed. Incredible speed. Instantaneous. No calculation. All intuition. Intuition from doing it over and over and over and over again.

And that’s where the data comes from. Repetition.

I’ve lived the last five years, and several years before that at my previous company, making dozens of critical decisions daily. The reps of intuition lead to a data set that feeds the intuition.

What #product updates should we prioritize? Should I hire this designer? Should I work to reverse the loss of this customer account or let it go? What should I highlight in this pitch to this #vc?

I use 'gut'/qualitative info for exploration and discovery. And use data/quantitative data to measure and test.

The more decisions you make based on gut, the more feedback you get (in the form of outputs or outcomes). The more feedback you get, the more data feeds into your intuition for your next decision.

The accumulation of #data through intuitive #decisionmaking to further feed intuition eventually leads to mastery. And isn’t mastery what we all aspire to?

Lesson? Be more like the Ammophila wasp.

How do you make decisions?