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9
inTuiTion
The Competitive Differential
for Successful Leaders
SUSAN K. NEELY
American Beverage Association
9.1 Introduction
Ask the former governor of the seventh largest state, the CEO of
the largest independent soft drink manufacturer, or the COO of the
nation’s largest business advocacy organization if you can be a great
leader without using intuition, and the answer is a resounding “No.”
Although the three leaders use different words to describe intuition
and how they use it, all agree that intuition has provided the com-
petitive differential for many of their major successes. Having worked
with all of them at some point in my own career in both the public
and private sectors, as well as in politics, I can attest to their skilled
use of intu ...