The “Gut” Feeling – What is This?

Many top CEO’s from General Electric to Walmart to Army generals have these “gut” feelings about things, sometimes called “seeing around the corner”.  Is it real or fake.  Most of the time they seem correct in hindsight. I understand that psychologists have studied this and came to the conclusion that the sub-conscious brain is looking at trends, data, past history, competition, user complaints and finances and coming up with certain predictions.  It usually comes as a feeling, but if ones takes time to think about it the data is also available.

For example a CEO may say:  “that marketing campaign is wrong”, maybe a correct feeling, but why. Maybe it does not connect with users, too wordy, wrong words or just boring.

Here is a reference: When to trust your gut feeling by Jack Welch (General Electric)

Also look at these quotes from BrainyQuote.

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