Logical vs. Intuitive Business Practices: Is It Time for a Shift?

Any time you’re faced with a tough decision, are you more likely to rely on logic or your intuition to help you make up your mind? In business and in life, there’s a place for both logic and intuition. But when it comes to business practices, there’s often an imbalance between intuition and logic. 

Logic and Intuition in Business

More often than not, business owners tend to lean toward the logical part of their decision-making. Of course, there’s always a place for logic! The problem is, when logic drowns out what your intuition is telling you, you miss out on the magic of intuitive business practices. 

Is it time to make a shift?

None of this is to suggest you shouldn’t listen to logic when it comes to running your business. But what if you could balance logic and intuition to make decisions in your business that not only make logical sense, but feel good to you at the same time? 

Think back to a time in your business when you made a decision and it didn’t turn out how you wanted. Now try to recall if you made that decision based on logic or intuition. 

Logical vs. Intuitive Business

Here’s an example to help you see the difference between the two.

Let’s say you own a boutique where you carry a number of clothing brands. You’ve gotten to know the industry and your customers well, and you’ve decided you want to create your own clothing brand to sell at your store. You start with a small launch, a line of sweaters.  

Based on what seems to be working for other businesses, you choose a tie-dye pattern for these sweaters. This decision is based on logic. You think, “If it works for other businesses, it will work for me too.” So, you launch your sweaters and the results are, well, disappointing.

Sales are dismal. Your customers tell you they hoped your sweaters would be in neutral colours. Your stomach sinks because you “KNEW” this would be the case. This knowing was your intuition all along. Before you launched your sweaters, your intuition was telling that even though other brands were focusing on tie dye patterns, the customers you know–YOUR customers–would prefer neutral colours. 

But you were looking at the numbers and strategies of OTHER businesses, rather than listening to what you know about YOUR business. 

You didn’t have a balance between logical and intuitive business practices in place, and you paid the price for this.

Striking a balance

Let’s circle back to how there’s a place for both logic and intuition in business and apply it to the sweater situation.

If logic was telling you tie dye would sell better, but intuition was nudging you toward neutrals, how could you find a balance between both? 

For many business owners, it comes down to strategy and planning. Rather than diving into either decision based on logic or intuition, what if you took the appropriate steps ahead of time to help you make the most informed decision?

If your intuition is telling you one thing but logic is saying another, you could have polled YOUR customers ahead of time. You could have started with a small launch of neutral sweaters to see if your intuition was guiding you correctly (HINT: it almost always is!). Or you could have started with a small launch of tie dye sweaters to see if the logic really added up and how this product would perform for your business. 

(By the way, I have a whole post on the single question that can help you tune into your intuition. Find it here!)

Switching to a more intuitive model

When I work with business coaching clients or members of my group coaching programs, intuition is a big focus in our work together. Tuning into and honing your intuition can have a profound impact not only in business but throughout every aspect of your life. 

The more in tune you are with your intuition, the more balanced your decision-making process is. You’re able to make quick decisions in high-stakes situations, even when you don’t have all of the “facts” to base this decision on.

When you’re tuned into your intuition, you access an innate superpower we ALL have. It just takes the right kind of work to tap into it. 

Is that the kind of work you’re ready to do?

Then this post comes at the perfect time because the tools to do this are just some of what you will learn during my Soulful Leadership group coaching program which is about to launch again! Last time, it filled up FAST so make sure you’re subscribed to my newsletter (you can sign up here) to be the first to hear when enrollment opens.