Data Analysis vs. Human Intuition: Which One Leads to Better Decision-Making?

If you know a thing or two about corporate decision-making, you might be familiar with the terms, “Data Analysis”, “Data Science”, “Data Engineering”, and whatnot. 

While the people working in all these 3 areas do different day-to-day tasks, they’re all aimed toward one goal: helping their organization make decisions based on data. 

Companies have been storing and analyzing data for decades now. It’s a common trend these days to look at the information stored from several years back, learn from it, predict future trends, and make decisions based on those. 

However, I believe the rising trend of data analysis will eventually push humanity back into intuition-based decision-making. 

But before I talk about that, let’s tell you how data-based decision-making works. 

Data-Backed Decision-Making

“Show me the data!” — it’s something many scientifically “smart” leaders say before taking a decision. Whenever there’s a turn to be taken, the first thing they do is to analyze the information they’ve already got, and try to predict the future from it. 

And I don’t blame them. This strategy works, and it has been proven by the fact that every tech giant these days uses such decision-making techniques. 

For instance, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Meta; all of them store their users’ data, learn from it, and try to predict their future behaviors to make better business decisions. 

Companies today have resorted to such decision-making techniques a lot more than they used to do a decade ago. However, I believe there’s a limit to this approach, and eventually, we’re going to have to rely on our human-ly intuition, or as they like to call it, “gut feeling” in the near future. 

Why Intuition Is Safe to Fall Back On 

Today’s corporate decision-making very much relies on data analysis. So much that I’m afraid we could lose the “human touch” if we continue on this path. 

However, I think human intuition is always something to fall back on. While it could be risky, as each person’s intuition could vary wildly, I’m willing to bet “smart” people can do wonders based on their gut feeling. 

I’d like to give an example of Steve Jobs here; the way he marketed Apple’s first-gen MacBook Air, which is, by far, the world’s best-selling laptop for quite some time now. 

He unveiled the product on stage in a tiny office envelope. No data-based analysis could ever come up with an idea like that. However, Steve used his intuition to come up with this brilliant idea to indicate how thin and light his new creation was. 

I believe making such creative, game-changing decisions is only possible if leaders rely on their gut feeling, and not just data alone. 

Find the right balance

The goal is to find the right balance between data-based decision-making and intuition. 

When a decision heavily relies on data, say when you’re launching a new product in a new market, and you use data to analyze whether people of that market are actually interested in that kind of product, data-backed decision-making is the way to go. 

On the contrary, if you believe your product has the capability to make room for itself in the new market, relying on your gut feeling is viable, too. 

To be on the safer side, you want to find the perfect mix of both. 

The Bottom Line

As we grow and prosper in a highly digital, data-driven world, I believe falling back on our intuition is a creative way to make decisions. 

While relying on years of stored information is a safe bet, using intuition might let leaders excel at what they do, what they create, and how they present it to the world.