Many years ago, someone broke my heart. I’ve had breakups before, but this one was really bad. When, a few months later, I realized I’m still immersed in it, I decided to go to see a therapist whose expertise is romantic relationships. After we finished talking about my childhood and how I became the person I am, we started every session by me sharing any updates I had from the romantic battlefield. 

One day, I told my therapist about this guy I met the other night. He seemed to be exactly what I was looking for, but the date wasn’t very good. We didn’t click. At this point, the therapist stopped me, and said what would become a defining moment in my life: you are using your head too much. You have great intuitions, trust them. 

It was probably the first time someone gave me permission to fully rely on myself without any external evidence that I’m right. Growing up as a smart kid, logical thinking where I could fully prove my point became my strong suit. It was well appreciated by the people around me, and soon became one of my preferred tools for achieving my goals in life. 

The problem was that it worked. It worked so well, that I started relying on it even in places where it wasn’t the right tool to use – for example, in romantic relationships.

As product leaders, logical thinking is exactly what we are expected to bring to the discussion table: data-driven, well-explained recommendations. We all know not to rely on our opinions, and I fully agree with this guideline. But could it be that in this effort we took it one step too far? Intuition is not an opinion, it’s something else (more on that below). But in the name of being data-driven, we are not using a very powerful tool that we have available, one that would give us insights that data often cannot. I know I have done that for a long time.

Intuition is an amazing tool to add to your arsenal. Since that chat with my therapist many years ago, I started relying on it more in areas where it felt appropriate. But in recent years, since I started my own company, it became a very powerful tool that I use in business as well, and encourage my customers to use. However it’s not trivial to do it right, so here is a quick guide on how to use your intuition responsibly.

Why “Doing What I Feel Like” Works

As a business owner, I use my intuition a lot. It is much easier for me to do so since I’m also the one that provides most of the service, and unlike in your role as a product leader, the consideration of whether or not I like doing what I do is a legitimate one. I did notice, however, that while this gave me the legitimacy to go with my intuition, the intuition itself often proved to be true for a much more logical and evident reason. 

Here is a real example: as part of the periodic strategic planning that I do, I review the services that I provide. As a product person, I try to keep them well-defined and packaged and go less with projects that are defined based on per customer need. I’ve had many services and business models offered over the years. Nowadays I offer three services only (with a fourth in the works): product strategy consulting and CPO mentoring for startups, CPO Bootcamp, and one-off lectures to product organizations and entrepreneurs on advanced product leadership topics. 

Until recently, I offered another type of service as well. But when I needed to put a goal on this offering’s sales, I really didn’t feel like it. I was sitting with my CMO and she literally saw it on my face and asked what was wrong. At first, I couldn’t say much. I didn’t know. But as I let myself dig deeper into it, I understood that there is a real issue with the ROI and scalability of this specific offering, and I made a conscious decision to stop offering that service. My intuition actually pointed out something that turned out to be logically the right decision.

Another example that I use a lot is when I help startups find their ideal customer profile. One of the questions that I ask is “who are the customers that you like working with the most?” This question works at the intuitive level, but always points to real insights, since if you think about it – who are the customers that you would like working with most at a startup? The ones that are engaged in conversations with you easily (hence they see value in your potential product), the ones who are willing to bear with you on the time it takes you to fully support them (hence they experience the pain you are solving and don’t have other straightforward solutions), and the ones that sales go most smoothly with (hence they have a budget and are willing to put it on your solution). But that’s exactly what makes them your ideal customer profiles – the ones that you would want to go and seek similar ones to grow with.

Here, too, intuition points out on a real, logical, gold mine.

Intuition Is Our Own Deep Learning

When you think about intuition, it might feel shaky. Something too uncertain and emotional to rely on. But there is a reason these examples from above actually worked, and it’s that the definition of intuition is quite different: intuition is defined as something that you know without conscious reasoning. In other words, intuition is knowledge, not a feeling, but we don’t know how we learned it. 

Trusting your own intuition is hard, we feel much safer trusting facts. Things that we know. But if you think about it, in modern life we trust “intuition” all the time: when did you last tell a friend that you will be at their place by noon, just because that’s what Waze told you? Without getting specifically into Waze’s algorithm, so many things we use and trust today to run our lives by, use deep learning. In deep learning, the machines we train learn by themselves based on examples we give them, without us knowing exactly what led them to their conclusion. Back when I was a developer, this then-science-fiction technology was called Neural Networks, since it was actually mimicking the way the human brain works and learns. 

Now that you think about it this way, wouldn’t be a shame to use machine intuition all the time – even thought we know it’s sometimes wrong – but not to trust your own? 

Listen to Yourself

To help you get started, it’s important to say that intuition is something that builds up over time. Much like deep learning, we have to see many examples and live in a certain world in order to develop our intuition for it. For example, when I joined Imperva as a product manager, I knew nothing about cybersecurity. I didn’t come from this world and, at first, I relied only on what other people told me or stuff that I read online. But over time I realized that I have a much better sense of what would work and what wouldn’t, what my customers really wanted etc. To make sure I’m not delusional, I tested myself. I started with an assumption I had – one that came to me intuitively – and then went to check if it was true in the real world. As my assumptions proved to be quite accurate, I knew I could trust them a little more easily. I literally felt my intuition created over time in this new field.

The first step in the path to relying more on intuition starts by simply listening to it without taking action. Many times we have a gut feeling about something, but we simply ignore it since moving forward with it is risky. Putting the action aside allows you to stop and see what this gut feeling actually is, objectively.

A very simple way of doing it is asking yourself what is your gut feeling about the thing you are now thinking about. Doing it this way frames it exactly like it is – a gut feeling, with the proper mental disclaimer that we probably aren’t going to use it or might be completely wrong. But still, having it as yet another factor to consider gives it the proper space to show up if it is indeed meaningful.

The next step, if you think there is something in it, is to ask yourself why this is your intuition. This helps to bring it from the subconscious to conscious thinking. In this model, you are using your intuition as a cue, as a starting point to think about something logically and consciously, and not as irresponsible, instinctive, decision-making as one might think.

In fact, the irresponsible thing would be to ignore such a powerful insight-providing tool as part of your decision-making process. Just like you wouldn’t give up on insights coming from data, don’t give up on insights coming from intuition. It’s here to help you.