“Intuition Can Be A
Trusted Advisor, But Also Can be Dangerously Unreliable When
Evaluating/Selecting New Products, Services and Technologies.”
Some schools of thought believe that intuition is at the center of all
decision making and that analysis is but a supporting tool. I have found
that this theorem to be generally the case in making simple decisions like
where should we go for dinner tonight, but can be dangerously unreliable
in making complex decisions, such as, evaluating/selecting new products,
services and technologies.
To illustrate my point, I recently talked to the head of a biomedical
engineering department, at a five hospital system on the East Coast about
his decision to hire two more biomedical engineers to reduce his
biomedical contract cost at a savings of $750,000 annually vs. moving all
of his biomedical equipment into a self-funding program at a savings of $1
million annually. Only to hear from him that his GUT told him that this
was the best course of action at this time for his healthcare system.
After talking to him further I found that his reason for this decision was
that he didn’t believe (instinctually) that he could buy parts as cheaply
as his contractors could to repair his biomed equipment on a time and
material basis. When I told him that my experience had been that he could
buy parts less expensively from the original equipment manufacturers he
didn’t believe me, because he had been CONDITIONED (and had an emotional
bias) to believe that the manufacturers of his equipment must know what
parts work best with their equipment and have fair and competitive prices.
As you can see by this discussion this biomedical engineer made this
decision based on his instincts -- not on the facts of the situation!
Conditioning And Biases Can Warp Your Instinctual Decisions
Bruce Henderson, Boston Consulting Group, defines intuition as “the
subconscious integration of all experiences, conditioning, and knowledge
of a lifetime, including the cultural and emotional biases of the
lifetime.” I might point out that the operative words in this definition
are CONDITIONING AND BIASES, which can blur your objectivity as it did
this biomedical engineer. That’s why your intuition can lead you down a
dangerous path unless you use decision tools first to hone your
instinctual abilities.
All good decisions have three components: (i) identify the problem or
challenge, (ii) search for solutions and (ii) evaluate those solutions.
The best decision system ever devised to make decisions regarding the
purchase of products, services and technologies is value analysis, which
incorporates all of these components into a decision tree. By first
studying the functions of a product, service or technology, then searching
for and evaluating lower cost alternatives to meet the required functions,
we remove all prior conditioning and biases from the buying equation.
Harness The Power Of Your Intuition With
Value Analysis
Intuition is our brains way of interpreting and reaching conclusions based
on our storehouse of memories and prior life experiences. This
unconsciously guides us when we need to make a small or complex decision.
Unfortunately, our brain works with old patterns and information which
can be imperfect, conditioned and biased. That’s why we need to utilize a
disciplined evaluation/selection tool like value analysis to harness the
power of our intuition and keep the decision making process open and
sustained as opposed to making quick decisions based our GUT FEEL! The
instinct to rush a buying decision just because it feels right to you is a
dangers path to take. A more prudent approach is to “not trust your gut”
until you can demonstrate through the value methodology that your decision
is sound, broadly based and defensible.
Robert T. Yokl, President, The HCP Group, Ltd., has over 35
years of experience as a consultant and manager in the field of
Supply Value Chain Management and is one of the country's leading
healthcare experts in value analysis, value engineering, Non Salary
Expense Reduction and materials
management. He is the developer and program leader of the award winning
Certified Value Analysis Practitioner Training Program™. Mr. Yokl is also
the developer of the healthcare industry's leading ValueNetCentral™ Value
Analysis Software. Over the past two decades he has trained thousands of
healthcare managers in his patented Strategic Value Analysis™ and
Team-Based Project Management™ processes and has assisted scores of
organizations in developing their own value management programs. He has
published six books, videos and audios on supply/value chain management.
His latest book being, “ Strategic Value Analysis™: The #1 Smart Strategy
for Taking Cost Out of a Healthcare Organizations’ Healthcare Supply Value Chain”.
Robert T. Yokl - President - The
HCP Group, Ltd.