I've always had a pretty chatty gut.
Whether it was choosing a college or picking an apartment or deciding on dinner, I've never toiled much over decisions. I usually get a pretty strong feeling for what I want to do, and I just do that.
So it doesn't surprise me that I reflexively start a lot of conversation at work by saying, "My gut tells me..." But even at 24, I've lived plenty long enough to have learned most people in corporate America don't take kindly to the whims and fancies of a gut. They're not likely to respond, "Welp, if that's what your gut says, then follow I must!" It's more often, "Okay, but what does the data say?" or, "Okay, but has everyone aligned on that?"
Well I'm here to bring justice to the guts in the workplace. Because yes, guts can be highly biased, and yes, not even the most douchey of consultants could walk you through the decision making framework of a gut. But guts give you a starting place. They give you a first pass at any decision. If you approach every question you're asked with a completely blank slate, you can spend hours upon days upon weeks looking at all the different potential answers and filling out a Pros and Cons list for each and getting pulled in a hundred different directions. But using your gut as a starting place focuses everything. You're no longer aimlessly Googling for data points that might somehow be relevant and instead starting with a guess at the answer and thinking, "Okay, if I have to verify, what needs to be true?" And your gut will probably be right more often than you think, and if it's not, you'll find that out quickly after asking the right questions and pivot.
It seems counterintuitive to think you get to a right answer faster when you start with a guess than when you start with a completely open mind, but it's much easier to steer a moving ship than one that's sitting in the docks. Cheers to the guts.
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