Under what conditions are the intuitions of professionals worthy of trust depends on what you mean by “trust”. If you mean, “My gut feeling is telling me this; therefore I can act on it and I don’t have to worry,” we say you should never trust your gut.
You need to take your gut feeling as an important data point, but then you have to consciously and deliberately evaluate it, to see if it makes sense in this context. You need strategies that help rule things out. That’s the opposite of saying, “This is what my gut is telling me; let me gather information to confirm it.”
Find out more from McKinsey’s interview of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and psychologist Gary Klein.
