I Had a 'Hunch' That Would Happen!

"I Had a Hunch That Would Happen!"

My Job Here is Done™ Transcript (for general use only – machine-generated and it may not be accurate.) 

Kelli (00:00) Let's talk about snap decisions.

Dave (00:02) Okay? What's a snap decision?

Kelli (00:04) You know, not thinking about something long enough, gathering all the facts, and then maybe making a mistake.

Dave (00:09) Like when you drop food on the floor that you really wanted to eat and you pronounce the following five-second rule is in effect and start counting as you pick it up.

Kelli (00:18) Yeah. Do you really do that?

Dave (00:20) I do. You see, the coefficient of time versus germ load suggests that if you pick up the food that you dropped on the floor within 5 seconds, you don't have to worry about getting sick.

Kelli (00:31) That can't be true.

Dave (00:33) Then why does literally everybody say that?!

Kelli (00:36) You're taking this whole idea down a silly path. I'm talking about making an important decision based on a gut feeling, and all you want to do is eat food off the dirty floor. Do you kiss your Mama with that mouth?

Dave (00:48) Well, not on the lips. But I'm telling you this. Ii you take too much time making Go NoGo decisions, you miss opportunities. You won't get what you want and you will fail. Or worse.

Kelli (01:00) What could be worse than failing?

Dave (01:02) Well, Kelli? A nut dropped off a tree and it's in the middle, of course, a dirty road. Kelli, you're a squirrel and you dash out for it. A car is barreling down at top speed. While you hold that little nut in your little squirrel paws, what do you do? You Dart left. You Dart right, left, right, left, right.

Kelli (01:24) I had a hunch that would happen.

INTRO (01:27) Hi, I'm Dave, and I've been starting and running businesses all my life. And I'm Kelli, working for the man like a dog for decades. And you are YOU the driven career professional clawing your way up the ladder of success. Maybe running your own business. The next 20 minutes or so is just for you. Welcome to My Job Here Is Done.

Dave (01:51) Well, hello there and welcome to the program. I'm going to turn around real quick and check on Kelli the squirrel's health. But before we get started, just a quick reminder that you can learn more about the podcast, listen to all the previous episodes and interact with us at our website My Job Here is Done dot com

Kelli (02:10) and on social media at My Job podcast.

Dave (02:13) Kelli, I see you're okay?

Kelli (02:15) Yeah, but you're a total nut job.

Dave (02:17) Well, maybe, but the squirrel in the road got his nut. All he needed to do was to make a decisive decision quickly, and the chances of staying alive would have gone from zero to, like, 50/50. And I like those odds.

Kelli (02:34) So two quick lessons here. One, don't be a squirrel and two, when you make a fast decision and stick with it, you place the odds of success in your favor.

Dave (02:46) Today, we're going to take what seems like a way too short and very unscientific process of decision making and illustrate how this process is not being reckless. But it is a way to tap into one of the most powerful human reactions we've all felt.

Kelli (03:04) And that human reaction is the hunch. Merriam Webster defines hunch as a strong intuitive feeling concerning, especially a future event or result. And we've all felt hunches in our lives. Sometimes we call it a gut reaction, a premonition or a suspicion.

Dave (03:21) And like Kelli said, we have all experienced this sudden and often unexpected feeling of having a hunch or intuition. But why do you get these? What triggers the hunch?

Kelli (03:32) Some examples of a hunch or intuition that we have all experienced is the instant feeling you get of like or dislike when you meet someone.

Dave (03:41) Right?

Kelli (03:42) Or the immediate reaction you get when you see the perfect car to buy for example.

Dave (03:48) I had a hunch you’d use an example with a car.

Kelli (03:50) Why?

Dave (03:51) I really don't know. I guess I could think about it for a while and maybe come up with something. But hey, I was right. My hunch was right. Without doing all that extra work.

Kelli (04:02) I've met so many people that are very successful because they count on their intuition hunches to make decisions that need to be made quickly and often without many facts to back them up.

Dave (04:13) Right. I leverage it, too. I've been very well served by following my gut instincts, my hunches, especially when I had to make quick decisions. If I wouldn't have followed my hunches, I would have lost out on many great opportunities. And I've also used my Spidey senses when things don't quite seem right.

Kelli (04:32) Okay, Spiderman, call it intuitions, Spidey sense, gut feeling, or hunch. This is real. I was so fascinated about this when we came up with this episode that I did a bunch of research on hunches because, yes, like you, I've had many helpful hunches, too. But maybe also like you, I had no idea what really caused them, why they suddenly happened, why they're often accurate, and more importantly, can you use the power of the hunch in your career growth and business?

Dave (05:04) Yes. Spoiler alert. Yes.

Kelli (05:07) Here's some of what I learned, and we'll reference our sources in the show notes so you can dig deeper if you want. But the summary is fascinating. According to a study by Professor Gerard Hodgkinson of the center of Organizational Strategy, Learning and Change at Leeds University Business School, along with numerous other collaborating research, intuition, or as we are calling it today, the hunch is the result of the way our brains store, process, and retrieve information on a subconscious level. It's the stuff happening around us 24/7 that we consciously ignore, but the subconscious records it for later use.

Dave (05:45) Yeah, and a hunch is the brain drawing on those past experiences and seemingly random external clues to hint at you to make a decision one way or the other. But a hunch-like decision happens so fast because the reaction is sourced at a nonconscious level. All we're aware of is a general feeling that something is right or wrong or pro or con or good or bad.

Kelli (06:10) Quoting Professor Hodgkinson, people usually experience true intuition when they're under severe time pressure or in a situation of information overload or acute danger, where conscious analysis of the situation may be difficult or impossible.

Dave (06:27) Cool.

Kelli (06:27) And here's something else from the study that we found on Science Daily. Hodgkinson and his team cite the recorded case of a Formula One driver who braked sharply when nearing a hairpin bend without knowing why, and as a result, he avoided hitting a pile of cars on the track ahead, undoubtedly saving his life.

Dave (06:47) Spidey sense.

Kelli (06:48) The driver couldn't explain why he felt he should stop, but the urge was much stronger than his desire to win the race.

Dave (06:56) Professor Hotchkinson continues and says the driver underwent forensic analysis by a psychologist afterwards, where he was shown a video to mentally relive the event. In hindsight, he realized that the crowd, which would normally have been cheering him on, wasn't looking at him at all coming up to the bend, but looking the other way, in kind of a static, frozen way. This was the cue. He didn't consciously process this, but he knew something was wrong and he stopped in time.

Kelli (07:27) Can you relate? Have you had that good or bad feeling that just nagged at you? You don't know why, but you're being told by some nonverbal source to do something, make a decision, and you feel like the hunch is the way to go.

Dave (07:40) Here's the kicker. Hunches, for many people, are often right, and hunches are not just a shallow feeling. Absent any fact, we simply don't understand the facts that the brain has collected to strongly suggest that you follow the hunch.

Kelli (07:56) Spiderman Dave is making a good point. Hunches are suggestions that can be ignored. They are, in most cases, fleeting moments. They appear suddenly and vanish quickly. Some hunches are strong, others are just hardly there.

Dave (08:11) Kelli and I have found dozens of references to research that points to intuition hunches as being useful in the decision making process, especially in business. If you're one of those people who say to themselves, more often than not, I just wish I would have followed my hunch on that one, Kelli, then you are a candidate to put the five second rule method to work for you. And here's how it works. When you're presented with a decision that has to be made quickly, take no more than 5 seconds to assess the facts before you and the hunch you feel and go for it.

Kelli (08:47) Think of that squirrel in the road. It had no chance of living if it stayed out and did nothing. Think of that as analysis paralysis, where you waste precious time trying to hedge your bet in the right direction. Next thing you know, you didn't react in time. The opportunity passed you by, the competition acted faster, and you lost or worse.

Dave (09:08) Same squirrel in the road but instead of freezing and doing nothing, analysis paralysis, it became indecisive and waffles left, right, darting back and forth and expending a ton of effort, but essentially did nothing.

Kelli (09:27) Or our squirrel friend could have taken a decisive action, go left, and increase its odds of living by 50%. At least that's a huge improvement over zero.

Dave (09:40) This may sound weird, but your brain slows you down. I know that sounds impossible, but as smart and as fast as the brain can be, even the human body bypasses it for some really important stuff.

Kelli (09:56) Before Dave gives you that example, remember, the brain wants to slow you down. It's just doing its job to think. The brain wants to spend time consciously analyzing. It wants to be fed more information. It wants to rationalize by doing what if this and what if that type of work. It takes time to do that. And when it's unnecessary to do that, it can hurt you.

Dave (10:18) Oh yeah, our body bypasses the brain on purpose in some instances, because the brain is slow. Let's say that you accidentally touched a very hot surface, like a car's exhaust pipe with your hand. What happens?

Kelli (10:32) You pull away fast, right?

Dave (10:34) But how did you know to pull away? Do you think that the sensory nerve endings in your hand that touched the hot exhaust pipe sent a signal from your hand up the nerves in your arm to where it enters the spinal cord, and then the spinal cord sends those messages to the brain? And then the brain did a look up in its database and realized, hey idiot, that's hot and then sent a signal back through the spinal cord to the arm and the hand to trigger a motor function to pull your hand back. Do you think that's what happened?

Kelli (11:08) You would think the brain makes all decisions for the body, right? But you'd be wrong, correct?

Dave (11:14) If you had to go through all that nerve wiring and initially involved the brain to make a decision to pull your hand back, it would be so slow to make that decision that you would burn your hand even worse. Now the brain is bypassed. In this case, it's called a reflex arc. The sensory signals of ‘ouch that's hot’ follow nerves to the spinal cord, which sees the problem immediately and sends back a signal to create a super fast reflex. The brain had no part of that action whatsoever. Now, the brain did eventually get the message that it was hot, but the brain had no part in protecting you.

Kelli (11:54) Making fast decisions and using your power of hunches is super advantageous in business. It gives you a competitive edge, a reflex that makes you work faster. And by doing so, you'll have more chances to seize opportunities. You might be saying about now by making fast decisions on little to no conscious information. Isn't that just guessing?

Dave (12:15) Not according to the research and not according to successful business leaders who will tell you that they use their hunches often to make quicker decisions as a tiebreaker and when immediate action is required and they are not afraid to do it.

Kelli (12:31) Let's look at the power of hunches and apply the five second rule to business and let's see if we can use it to be more successful. And PS, the five second rule doesn't apply to the time food could sit on a dirty floor before it's too yucky to eat.

Dave (12:46) Yeah, you know you've done that.

Kelli (12:47) I have not.

Dave (12:48) There is a book called The Five Second Rule by Mel Robbins. You can see the show notes for a link to it. I love the way smart women think and Mel says this to describe her book. If you have an impulse to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill the idea.

Kelli (13:10) The book has three main components that will help you find a way to faster and better decisions through little acts of courage. The Five Second Rule makes you less afraid over time. She talks about the three reasons the right time will never come, so you just have to start and shows us how the Five Second Rule helps override your feelings.

Dave (13:29) The Five Second Rule, as described by Mel, is a tool that you can use to help you take action. It's literally a countdown from five to one, just like a rocket ship countdown to blast off. But your countdown is using the power of the hunch along with everything else to make a decision in 5 seconds or less. Trust us, we use this all the time and it works great.

Kelli (13:53) When I suggested the podcast idea to Dave, I gave a brief explanation, knowing very little about the whole podcasting business at the time. And I remember him saying very quickly, let's do it.

Dave (14:05) I had a hunch. I felt it. It felt right. And now we're dozens of episodes in and going strong.

Kelli (14:12) It would have been easy to say, let's think about it a little more. I guarantee we would have shelved it.

Dave (14:17) Yes, in my career, I've made many early regrets on opportunities that passed me by because I didn't make a go no go decision fast enough.

Kelli (14:26) Go, no go. Hear that? Your five second decision isn't always to do something. It's just as often to not do something and free your mind up so you can move on. The Five Second Rule works along with hunches to help you move quickly and decisively. And that is a goal that will help you climb the ladder of success.

Dave (14:46) Okay, so we have a fast way to make better decisions and I'd suggest reading Mel's book to really put that great advice to work. But what else can you do? Here's another tool you can use that takes both the theory of the Five Second Rule and the hunch into account, and it's material, tangible, and useful.

Kelli (15:07) Let's hear about it.

Dave (15:08) It's called the Five Second Test and I've used this often and it's funny that most people I know have never heard of it.

Kelli (15:15) You were going to clue me in on this a while ago, I think I had a project I was doing and you told me about it, but something happened and we never finished talking about it.

Dave (15:24) Yes, you were doing a logo or something and you had two choices and you wanted opinions and you were looking to try to get a focus group together. You were under a tight time frame, as I recall.

Kelli (15:36) Yeah, that was it.

Dave (15:37) Well, we talked about the Five Second Rule. Now let's talk about the Five Second Test. The link to this great, rather unknown asset is in the show notes. We're not affiliated with this company at all. I've just used it a lot of times and I love the concept, so I thought I'd share it with you today. The Five Second Test website allows you to upload pictures, art, graphics, webpages, or simply type phrases such as taglines into the platform where it will produce a side by side comparison that can be used as an AB test bed, one or the other. You can then ask questions like which image appears to be more professional looking or which phrase means quality to you? Literally anything that you'd ask in a focus group, participants are given 5 seconds to view the design, after which they answer some simple questions to respond.

Kelli (16:31) Oh, that's really cool.

Dave (16:32) Yeah. And best of all, you get to select the audience you want to be in your AB testing group, you can select different demographics from worldwide collections of people, and I'm guessing that that's probably in the hundreds of thousands.

Kelli (16:46) Didn't you use it to help convince an owner of a company that his opinion was wrong about what he thought customers would like?

Dave (16:54) Oh yeah. First of all, not everyone that I have met in business leadership has been smart. Some are just lucky despite their stupidity. We will do a podcast on this phenomenon and we're going to call it One Hit Wonders. Anyway, this guy was convinced that his new finishing treatment for his expensive aftermarket car product was so much better and more professional looking than what the team had come up with. It wasn't. He wanted nothing to do with about hearing an alternative or anything. His ego was huge and it was just more proof of his lack of true leadership skills. Literally, no one in the company agreed with him. It was awful.

Kelli (17:39) Oh, I remember how frustrated you were.

Dave (17:41) Oh yeah. I was in there to fix a long term problem him. He hired me to find out why his company was losing people, customers and its reputation. In the end, he was the problem was him and unfortunately, I couldn't help him. But back to the story I told him nicely that it's what the customer would like that's important, not his like or dislike. I told him that everybody at the shop, about 40 people or so, all hated the look of his treatment. He brazenly told me my data was Invalid and the sample size was too small and biased against him. Okay, I said, what sample size would be needed for you to be convinced? And he, in his cocky ass attitude, said at least 500 people. I said, if I could do that sampling and they like one over the other by at least 60%, would you agree to accept that as proof? He laughed at me. I mean, he laughed at me like I was an idiot. Oh, this guy was a piece of work. He said, 500 will work proclaiming, You have till Friday.

Kelli (18:49) Oh, he baited you.

Dave (18:50) Yeah. Friday was a few days away. He knew there was no way I could get a 500 person focus AB test group together by then.

Kelli (18:59) But he didn't know about the Five Second Test website.

Dave (19:04) He did not. I took exact pictures of one of the products with his finish applied and another identical product picture of the team's finish. There was literally nothing different about the two pictures, not size, shape, or anything, they were exactly in focus. And the only thing that was different was the treatment. I uploaded both pictures to the five second test site, picked out the audience demographics for the customer type that we were targeting, an aftermarket expensive car. Can you guess the target market?

Kelli (19:34) Yes.

Dave (19:35) Men, 25 to 49 years old. Rich as hell, right? And I paid for 500 impressions. It took about 24 hours to get those 500 impressions. And voila, just as I and everyone else's hunch told us, the team's product finish was selected as the most professional looking by a whopping 89%.

Kelli (20:00) Wow. Take that you.

Dave (20:01) Yeah. Long story short, it worked. He capitulated. The Five Second Test is awesome. You can use it in many ways of testing ideas, marketing, and more, and it's quick and inexpensive.

Kelli (20:13) Here's the takeaway. Both the Five Second Test and the Five Second Rule rely on using a blend of conscious and subconscious inputs to help you as a leader make good, fast decisions. The power of your intuition is huge. If you tap into it and believe in its accurate.

Dave (20:30) Yeah, you got to believe in it.

Kelli (20:31) It gives you the power of that 6th sense, gut feeling and inner voice that helps you make the best decision, especially when you're under pressure or time constraints.

Dave (20:43) I had a hunch you'd feel that way.

Kelli (20:47) Thank you very much for listening today. If you like our podcast, please tell a friend about us. Just one friend or colleague who you think would enjoy the content and stories we share.

Dave (20:56) You can listen to My Job Here Is Done anywhere and everywhere odcasts are available and check out our website for all the latest info on our show and how you can work with us at myjobhereisdone.com.

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