Martin Okner, CEO, Fromm International
I trust my gut 100 percent. I still focus on the importance of having the right financial, planning and analytical tools in place. That said, the role of the CEO is to provide clear direction on where the company should be in the future, establish the right resource allocation strategy to get there and build capabilities. To be effective, a CEO must look at all inputs — both analytical and qualitative — and put this together in a way where the future becomes clear.
Chelsea Riggs, CEO, Amika
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It really depends on the situation. Instinct is something you develop over time, and it’s always evolving. I’m constantly absorbing different bits of information — whether it’s from industry news, chats with customers, colleagues or friends, keeping an eye on social media, or just spending time with data sets. All these inputs help shape my gut feelings and give me more confidence in making decisions.
Brooke Harvey-Taylor, Founder & CEO, Pacifica
I believe that we have the ability to hone our intuition (which I see as instinct) and by doing so, we can begin to trust it more and use it to our advantage. I spend time working on this personally, and so my instinct is the first thing I check in with. But I still use analytics to guide my decisions. I’d say it’s about a 70/30 split (unless that analytics tell a really big, compelling story that I might have missed). And if I can’t make a decision, I sit with it overnight. I go to bed thinking about it so that it gets into my subconscious and in the morning, I hopefully have more clarity.
Aïda Moudachirou-Rébois, Senior Vice President and General Manager, MAC
Today, we’re fortunate to have plenty of data readily available. There’s no debate that data makes us smarter. However, experience and guts remain essential. I once heard Jane Lauder refer to AI as Augmented Instinct, and I instantly had a light-bulb moment. Data is essential for understanding your consumer and measuring success, but it can only tell us so much. For the rest of it, we need to dig deep into our experience, our expertise and trust our instincts.
Christiane Pendarvis, Co-CEO, Pattern Beauty
This is a quandary leaders will always face, especially if your gut is telling you something different than the data. My answer is, it depends. I trust my gut when the question is more forward-facing, innovative or creative in nature. Consumers can only tell you what they want or prefer within a context they understand, but when you’re innovating, often they don’t have the vision. That’s when I trust my instincts more. But when it’s a question that’s easily understood and where the metrics are more objective and quantifiable, I lean on the data. A good leader has to learn how to situationally balance instinct and analytics.
Anastasia Soare, CEO, Anastasia Beverly Hills
In my case, growing up in Romania without access to analytical tools, relying on intuition was a practical way to navigate various situations. My intuition was shaped by my experiences, cultural context and the collective wisdom of my community. This intuitive decision-making process can be valuable in situations where there is a lack of data or time constraints.
Emily Coleman, CEO, Chantecaille
If you had asked me 10 years ago, my answer would have undoubtedly been analytics. At the time, I was in a commercial role and I had access to frequent accurate comprehensive data; analytics made sense. Today, in a leadership role focused on the luxury beauty consumer, I’d say there is a place for both.
Analytics require access to recent, rich and accurate data sets —sometimes that’s simply not available. Analytics also mostly measure what already exists, and while they can help identify trends, they cannot predict the future or identify something “unexpected.”
Today, consumers expect brands to bring them things they did not even know they needed. The ability to do that comes from instinct and creativity. For me, that means trusting instinct and experience, but then verifying with data and course-correcting as needed.
Piyush Jain, CEO, Maesa
Rigorous data analytics should be the bedrock of decision making in business. Instinct is not a substitute. However, data is often imperfect, and the same data can be interpreted to draw different conclusions. That’s where trusting your gut comes in. But I like to say, “gut must be earned.” You want to inform your decisions with personal experiences and an understanding of the business and the consumer environment. This instinct, formed through deep experience, can make a difference between a good decision and a great one.
Justin Seidenfeld, Cofounder, Canopy
As we got going, Canopy relied on instincts over analytics. As a small and scrappy team, we didn’t have the bandwidth or resources to go deep enough on analytics for decision-making. Over the past year, however, we’ve been able to go deeper and more robust on leveraging analytics for decision-making, especially when it comes to marketing decisions (what creative performs best, impression counts and ROI on all content). But instincts still drive people-related decisions. Canopy’s best asset is its team, and our team building has always been based on instincts, and that’s not changing anytime soon.
