Act on the information you have
OK, it’s the oldest business cliche in the world: You have to trust your gut instinct. But the fact of the matter is, if you want to be adaptable, there will be times you’re going to have to run without all the information.
Drake’s father, an entrepreneur, taught her that there’s actually a bit of a system to the so-called gut instinct. She fleshed that idea out during her graduate work at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern.
“(My father) would say, ‘Follow your instincts even before you’re ready,’” She says. “Now, that also was manifested in a different way in business school. One of the things we talked about was how we were always making decisions before we were ready. When you had some data, you were looking at information, but it wasn’t enough, but then it was time to decide. So people who like to do things right and well sometimes aren’t good at quickly getting somewhere without all the data and information that they want.”
Following your gut means acquiring all the information you can and then acting on it.
“You have to make decisions and follow your instincts before you’re ready or you just won’t get anything done,” she says. “And your instincts are valuable, it’s not like it doesn’t count. And that’s something I’ve learned over the years — when I have this intuition about something, it’s usually right. That helps you move faster.”
Following your instincts doesn’t mean that if you have a hunch, you act on it. Instead, it’s taking the course of action that makes the most sense to you and doing your best to explain it to others.
“You have to articulate it enough to convince others if that’s part of what your game is,” Drake says. “The best is to give some examples, and even discussing it with people is a big move. I don’t think people do that enough. … Even talking about these things to direct reports, or any level of employee, is a really good thing because I don’t think people get taught enough. Once you go to a job, it’s like you get a few training courses, but otherwise, you’re sort of on your own.”
The fact of the matter is, so many companies get so caught up on metrics that they are often slowed down because the idea of using the best information available and making a decision ahead of the market is almost looked down upon. But Drake thinks innovation usually comes from those entrepreneurs working on short information and high adaptability. In fact, she preaches going with an educated instinct to her people.
“I’ll often say, go with your intuition, go with what you think, decide right now,” she says. “It’s also one of those things that you can work on with younger employees, because they haven’t had the benefit of people talking to them about this, and it’s almost sort of expected that you know how and you’re really taught more about subject matter, but it’s these kind of things that help push you.”
HOW TO REACH: DSC Logistics Inc., (800) 372-1960 or www.dsclogistics.com
