How smart health leaders make intuitive decisions

Abstract

A rational decision-making process enables a leader to process information clearly and logically and thus allows for accurate perception and interpretation of the event. It is believed this process prevents leaders from excessively distorting reality and being impacted by cognitive biases, both of which are possible, particularly under stressful conditions. But what happens when the decision-making environment is rapidly changing and the leader does not have time to deploy a thorough, comprehensive rational decision-making process? In time-compressed decision-making environments, leaders must often make quick, accurate decisions, with incomplete, inaccurate, or rapidly changing information, under extremely stressful conditions. To improve the ability of a leader to make high-stress, time-compressed decisions under rapidly changing conditions, we offer the intuitive decision-making process as an alternative to rational decision-making and discuss five components essential to improve intuitive decision-making outcomes.