{"id":3856,"date":"2023-04-30T21:52:05","date_gmt":"2023-05-01T03:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:10043\/?p=3856"},"modified":"2025-03-07T07:17:19","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T13:17:19","slug":"how-to-find-balance-in-business-by-trusting-your-gut-and-the-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/how-to-find-balance-in-business-by-trusting-your-gut-and-the-data\/","title":{"rendered":"How to find balance in business by trusting your gut and the data"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This article originally appeared in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennessean.com\/story\/money\/tech\/2023\/04\/30\/how-to-find-balance-in-business-by-trusting-your-gut-and-the-datamain-headline\/70154324007\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Tennessean<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Trust your gut or trust the data?<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Way back before information was always at our fingertips, the \u201cgut-trusters\u201d ruled the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Business legends like Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, Walt Disney, to name a few, relied on their intuition to succeed.\u00a0 They seemed to \u201cjust know\u201d what to do \u2014 making big decisions with an eerie sixth sense as their guide.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">And it worked.\u00a0 They trusted their guts to help them make the right decisions at the right times on their way to building successful companies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">But then along came the internet and a boatload of data, and the information age was born.\u00a0 And with it, the \u201ctrust the data\u201d approach began to take shape.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">These modern day \u201cdata geeks\u201d take a more scientific approach, needing proof to support any decision they make. \u00a0They make big decisions only after deep analysis that puts the odds in their favor for things to turn out as planned.\u00a0 And with the rapid onset of \u201cbig data,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/data-backup-and-recovery-strategies\/\">business<\/a> intelligence, cloud computing, and now AI\u2014the numbers geeks are able to use objective statistics as their guide.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">A few weeks ago, we started working on our company\u2019s strategic plan. What services should we focus on? Will the economy be better or worse? How much should we spend on marketing?\u00a0 The list went on. These are big questions with big impacts on how we do business over the next few years.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"gnt_m gnt_x gnt_x__lbl gnt_x__al\" aria-label=\"advertisement\">\n<div id=\"ad-slot-7103-tn-nashville-C1056-native-article_link-tech-3\" class=\"gnt_x_sl gnt_x_al gnt_x__prmt\" data-g-r=\"lazy\" data-gl-method=\"lazyLoadX\" data-google-query-id=\"CJDPtfeq-_4CFZnz4wcd1rsAhA\">\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">As our management team began to discuss our strategies, some decisions came easily and others we got totally stuck on.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">The easy ones, where intuition and data aligned, made for quick discussions that we breezed through with almost no debate.\u00a0 Both the gut-trusters and the data geeks were happy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">But where intuition and data were at odds, those decisions proved to be more challenging to reach consensus.\u00a0 Should we take the brave contrarian approach and follow our guts?\u00a0 Or should we take the \u201cMoney Ball\u201d approach and let the numbers tell us what to do?<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Over the years, we have developed a framework around how to handle situations where intuition and data collide.\u00a0 The idea is to avoid stalemates that put decisions indefinitely on hold.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Here\u2019s what\u2019s worked for us:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"gnt_ar_b_ul\">\n<li class=\"gnt_ar_b_ul_li\">First, we double-check the data.\u00a0 Is the data from a reliable source? Do we have enough data to make it statistically significant?<\/li>\n<li class=\"gnt_ar_b_ul_li\">We then check ourselves. Data-driven decisions often can be influenced by psychological factors like confirmation bias and group dynamics.\u00a0\u00a0 We try to counter this by being aware of it and encouraging everyone to speak their minds.<\/li>\n<li class=\"gnt_ar_b_ul_li\">We lean on intuition for \u201cpeople decisions.\u201d\u00a0 Trusting your gut on decisions around hiring, roles, and culture has always worked well for us.<\/li>\n<li class=\"gnt_ar_b_ul_li\">We measure the results of our decisions.\u00a0 Our goal is to quantify how we are doing so we know whether trusting your gut or trusting the data worked.\u00a0 This helps us improve our decision making approach the next time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">So, trusting your gut or trusting the data is not an either\/or.\u00a0 To do well in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/custom-built-software\/\" data-wpil-monitor-id=\"1960\">business these days both approaches are needed<\/a>. \u00a0Businesses that learn to apply each approach at the right times will keep gut-trusters and data geeks living together in harmony, and everyone will win.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\"><em>JJ Rosen is the founder of <\/em><a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|${u}\"><em>Atiba<\/em><\/a><em>,<\/em><em>\u00a0a <\/em><a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|${u}\"><em>Nashville custom software development firm<\/em><\/a><em>\u00a0and <\/em><a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|${u}\"><em>IT support company.<\/em><\/a><em>\u00a0Visit <\/em><a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/atiba.com\/\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|${u}\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Atiba.com<\/em><\/a><em>\u00a0for more info.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article originally appeared in\u00a0The Tennessean. Trust your gut or trust the data? Way back before information was always at our fingertips, the \u201cgut-trusters\u201d ruled the world. Business legends like Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, Walt Disney, to name a few, relied on their intuition to succeed.\u00a0 They seemed to \u201cjust know\u201d what to do \u2014 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":3857,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[217],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-tennessean"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}