CHAPTER 1
How It All Began
Matthew was a dot-com boomer and one of my first businessclients. Young, savvy, well connected, supported by his family,and just plain gutsy, he gathered terrific people around him anddug in. Starting in the proverbial garage—in his case a right coastBrooklyn apartment—he used his computer programming skills tobuild a website for celebrity promotion and other hard-to-get content.Beginning in 1992, we worked and learned together intensively forseveral years and remain friends to this day. For a time he made moneyin a field that still had no clear revenue model, all the while garneringvisibility for his creative genius. His little company went from zeroto an estimated value of fifteen million dollars in one year. Whatdizzying excitement, seemingly endless possibilities; what FUN!
While he learned about online business, I learned about businessintuition on demand. There are many stories to tell about those timesin the Manhattan loft, including the emerging issue of intellectualproperty in digital environments. Some of those early questionscontinue to intrigue and plague, depending on your point of view.But for me, assessing potential strategic partnerships and preparingfor surprise stand out above the rest. Regardless of size or domain,these are issues faced by organizations every day, loaded with landmines and with potentialities for success.
A larger company was interested in partnering with Matthew'scompany. These discussions involved meetings, proposals,counterproposals, estimations of valuation in an emerging market,intellectual property rights, and ultimately selling a product whenthere was as yet no proven revenue model for the Internet, then calledthe World Wide Web. "Who'll be there?" became a favorite gameof ours during the negotiation process. "Who or what is the largercompany, and who will be there to represent them? Whom do youneed to bring with you to the next meeting to match their interestand agenda and personalities?" Using a few low-tech tools like makinglists, framing questions, and finding a buddy who was willing tosuspend disbelief for a moment and play these intuitive games, it wasamazing to see the real-world impact of what can be learned in sevenseconds or less. While I am typically not present for such negotiations,Matt hew invited me to attend the signing ceremony once negotiationsconcluded. What a hoot to discover how closely the blind intuitiveassessment matched the individuals once we met face-to-face!
Several interesting factors emerged. For example, there wasintuitive evidence that a key player at the negotiating table would soonbe leaving the larger organization, and as a result was less investedin the process than one might have imagined or expected if he werefully "in." He was in a hurry. This simple, unresearchable fact thatthe chief negotiating attorney was on his way out proved to be animportant tidbit for Matthew's company, resulting in a tactical shiftand successful conclusion to the negotiation. There were many otherfactors as well, naturally. The point here is the importance of surprisethat comes with the regular, intentional use of intuitive tools in thebusiness world.
A second key element emerged in Matthew's story, also based onsurprise, I received clear intuitive indications that Leo, Matthew'sco-founder and vice-president, was planning to leave their owncompany very soon as well; not just the attorney from the potentialpartner company. When I passed the information on to Matthewand suggested strongly he plan for Leo's departure, he dismissed theleaving as impossible since the two had built the company together.He just could not imagine making the business work without hissidekick and business partner.
Two months later Leo, the vice president of Matthew's company,was gone under rather unseemly circumstances. Matthew's heart wasbroken, but he was prepared in advance, even if still unbelieving. Icould not save him from the heartbreak, but I could help him save thecompany by preparing for a succession plan in the event Leo did leave.
In addition to the lesson for Matt hew, there was another importantlesson for me as a professional business intuitive: just becauselesson for me as a professional business intuitive: just because theinformation you receive is unwelcomed at the time, it doesn't meanyou are wrong. When you feel strongly about your gut feeling, stickto your guns and go with it!
That set of experiences was the start of a wild ride on my pathto the mastery of business intuition on demand, or what I like tocall Seven Second Decision Making. Since the time with Matthew, Ihave worked with publicly traded companies and sole proprietorshipentrepreneurs, non-profit organizations, politicians, artists, spiritualpractitioners, soft ware developers, the hospitality industry, and a hostof individuals trying to figure out their purpose in life.
There will be much more to say about strategic partnershipsand other challenges facing contemporary businesses, but first let'stackle the basics: what is intuition, and what in the world can complexbusinesses start to figure out in seven seconds or less?
Blink
In 2005, Malcolm Gladwell's best selling book Blink: The Power ofThinking Without Thinking hit the stands and revolutionized ourunderstanding of lightning-speed decision making. The book flapsays, "Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who processthe most information or spend the most time deliberating, but thosewho have perfected the art of 'thin-slicing'—filtering the very fewfactors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables." Hispowerful chapter entitled "Seven Seconds in the Bronx," recountshow Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo was killed by the New Yorkpolice, based on errors of split-second observational data processed bypolicemen who saw him standing in front of his apartment buildingaround midnight. When Diallo reached for his keys, the four officersthought he was reaching for a gun and shot him 41 times.
Gladwell makes the point that we can process enormous amountsof data in seven seconds, as the police did in evaluating what AmadouDiallo was doing on that step at midnight. First, he didn't look likehe belonged there. Second, there was a lot of drug dealing in thatneighborhood so the officers assumed malevolent intent. Theirconclusions were based on nanosecond observational data gainedthrough professional experience.
Fifteen years prior to the publication of Blink, I was teaching smallgroups of students in my living room how to develop their intuitiveabilities, including how to come up with information in seven secondsor less. Most of our intuitive "targets" were not physically present,so Gladwell's observational "Blink," and Eckman and Friesen's five-hundred-pageFacial Action Coding System (FACS), were simply ofno use to us. We were gett ing very specific information about peopleknown to only one person in the room, people who were not presentto give physical clues. Something else was going on, and some aspectsof how intuition works still remain a mystery to me. We did not needa five hundred-page manual to "get" open-ended information aboutwhat was going on with a stranger in another part of the country orthe world. How was that possible?
For decades I have worked with clients over the phone, online,and by email; I knew absolutely nothing except a name. I wouldeventually meet some who became regular clients, but in those yearsbefore Skype and other visual meeting soft ware there were no visualclues, and oft en not even sound, as consults would be typed by me onthe computer, oft en alone in the middle of the night.
We process inordinate amounts of very complex information veryquickly. I have found that the best way to get to information that weknow, without knowing how we know, is to speed up the process andto begin blathering what seems like made-up information before therational mind can kick in. Th at is the reason for the seven seconds orless rule. As we become more sophisticated with the process, sevenseconds will actually feel like an eternity.
In college I had a summer job in a factory just outside Bostonthat manufactured tennis shoes. We worked on conveyor belts, andthe task on my night shift was to complete over a thousand pair oftennis shoes in eight hours. My individual job was to move the metallast that held the shoe-in-process from one conveyor belt to the other,and to put latex on the toe once the sole had been attached. Not toochallenging for someone with dreams of someday earning a Ph.D.
The first week I thought I was going to die. There was no wayI could keep up with the pace of the relentless movement of thatconveyor belt. But after a couple of weeks I felt as if I could run aroundthe building between shoes! Boredom became the biggest challenge,not meeting the goal to make a thousand pair of sneakers per night.
The same principle applies to intuition. Initially you might thinkit impossible to get meaningful information in seven minutes, let aloneseven seconds. But as you become accustomed to just diving intowhat I like to think of as a unified field of knowledge, a mere secondbetween the framing of a question and the intuitive response mightbegin to feel slow.
The more time you have to think, the less time you have to intuit.It is that simple.
CHAPTER 2
So What is Seven SecondDecision Making?
Seven Second Decision Making is the natural blend of reason,experience and intuition. In a remarkably brief moment the mindcan sift through endless data and simply know the best courseof action or most likely outcome for business or life. It is knowingrepeatedly and with certainty, without understanding exactly howone knows. It is gut feeling on demand with high levels of accuracy,and it can have an extraordinary impact on business success andpersonal fulfillment, beginning in seven seconds or less.
It is a methodology, a process for obtaining consistent, accurate,ethical, insight-on-demand, for me especially in the domains ofbusiness and frontier science. All other domains, of course, enjoy equalaccess with equal ease. Intuition both uses surprise and forewarns ofits occurrence.
Seven Second Decision Making requires:
• Focus: this and only this. In a field of many variables andalmost limitless probabilities, what is the most likely courseof events? What information is available to change the mostprobable course, if it is a desired one, and to arrive at the chosendestination or outcome with the greatest amount of ease?
• Interpretation: knowledge of context. What does theinformation mean for this person or this company or thissituation at this time? Are there symbols to be interpreted, orimages, or numbers, or emotions? Interpretation is possiblewhen the other tools are strong.
• Discernment: the capacity to distinguish. What is mine? Whatis yours? What is truly relevant in this particular situation?
• Integrity: only the highest ethical standards will do. Noimplicit or explicit conflicts of interest.
• Trust: in the self; in the other; in the future; in the world; inhuman nature; in fundamental good intention; in life itself.
Intuition is the Foundation for Seven SecondDecision Making
Since this is principally a self-help book rather than an academic one, Ifocus minimally on the lively theoretical debate in business literatureabout the definition and reliability of intuition. There are manyresources that define intuition principally as "pattern recognition,"including articles in the Harvard Business Review and other mainstreamrefereed academic journals. At least they are talking about it! Cutt ingright to the chase, and for my purposes here, these are my assertions:
• Unprovable Assertion: Intuition makes it possible to pickup information about anything in the known and unknownuniverse in seven seconds or less.
• Demonstrable assertion: Using intuition, people can comeup with useful and repeatedly accurate information aboutunknown people, places, things, and businesses.
For a time I was on the speaker's bureau of a national organizationthat supports the personal and professional development of CEOs. Inone of those workshops I asked if any of the fairly skeptical participantswere working on a new product that had not been shared outsidethe company. One man in particular raised his hand and agreed toplay along with our little intuition game. I'll call him Robert. Thishappened near the beginning of the workshop, so no one in the roomhad received any training on business uses of intuition.
I asked the other members of the group to describe the productRobert's company was working on. "Just start babbling," I instructedthem. By the way, each CEO support group is constructed in such away as to avoid placing potential business competitors in the samegroup. In this way members could be as open as possible in theirdiscussions with each other.
Right away people started throwing out descriptive phrases,feelings, words, and images. We eventually filled up several sheets ofbutcher-block paper with descriptions of this very secret new product:how long it would take to complete; what marketing or productionchallenges the company might face with the product; how thecompany would be doing two, five, and ten years from now; and whatone piece of advice each member would give to Robert. One groupmember even jumped up spontaneously and drew a picture of whathe thought the product looked like!
When we finished, our volunteer Robert was free to tell us onlywhat he felt comfortable divulging in feedback to the group members.By the time this exercise was over, not only he, but also everyone else inthe room was picking his or her jaw up off the floor. This collaborativeeffort, this very short game, resulted in an uncanny description of thenew secret product under development in Robert's company, and heended up sharing enough to prove the point: everybody is intuitive andanybody can tap into that capacity at any time on demand.
There are many additional questions that could be raised aboutthis instance of intuition at work, including questions of privacy andbusiness ethics. There were controls in place so that Robert couldnot give clues through body language. But for now let's just say thatit is possible for people to get information about other people andcompanies in seven seconds or less with no formal training. That is myassertion. Whether this latent talent is acknowledged or developed isquite another matter, but the capacity is there.
• Intuition is a continuous signal that provides informationabout the nature of the whole or any of its componentparts. For me, the whole is literally All That Is, and thatincludes all that could ever be. I believe this signal to becomprised of energy "signatures" that operate in bothmaterial and non-material domains.
• Intuition can reach beyond past and present to identify,interpret, and actually create patterns in the future, aseasily as it responds to those future patterns in the here andnow, or recognizes them from the past.
• Intuition is not bound by linear equations. The mind canbounce from one type of information or processing to anotherwithout skipping a beat, and can link the rational, emotional,data driven, observational, and intuitive together as pearlsin a single strand of necklace. Working in a domain outsidespace and time, intuition permits non-sequiturs and apparentnonsense to flow into the conscious mind without having to belinked rationally to any past pattern or action. In this unusualway, pivotal factors that might otherwise be eliminated fromconsideration can be considered together, forming new and asyet unrecognizable patterns for the future.
• In my view intuition is the non-verbal language of the cosmos.I call intuition language because its purpose is communication—within,between, and among parts of the whole—whateverthe parts look like, act like, or become. It is intuition thatholds the whole together, moving in unison like a flock ofbirds flying south for the winter, dipping, diving, turningin mind-boggling synchrony, heading sometimes for adestination they have never seen, but know exists. Eachparticle has its own signature and is aware of its own existenceand the existence of all other units of the whole. It does notmatter whether these units are identified individually orcollectively as they change form and expression; their identityis inviolate and known by all others. That is my worldview,and that is how I believe I can do what I do effectively. Inhis book Entangled Minds, especially the chapters on "GutFeelings" and "Theories of PSI," Dean Radin does a superbof explaining better than I ever could how it is I know what Iknow.
Business applications of intuition take special advantageof this "connection to the whole" to provide an intuitive edge forhuman resource decisions, new product development, and globalfinancial markets. The developed hunch can flesh out the impact orconsequences of decisions made now, thereby avoiding financial orproductivity pitfalls in the future.
Because we are connected to the whole through our capacity forintuition, we can compute probabilities in a flash and identify the mostprobable outcome of any particular action or choice from any momentin time. What a boon to business!
