Managing in the Gray

Managing in the Gray

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autobiography Sloan wrote, “The final act of business judg-

ment is, of course, intuitive.”

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Notice the last three words in this statement. Sloan—the

brilliant, dedicated, lifelong analyst and systematizer—says

that intuition, not facts or analysis, is the pivotal factor in

making decisions. Notice also that Sloan says “of course.”

For him, the role of intuition was plain. His firm conviction

was that, in the end, the final, decisive factor for making seri-

ous decisions is an intuitive judgment—a hard-to-pin-down

fusion of a particular individual’s experience, character, and

perspective—that determines whether one course of action

is, in the end, better than another.

Sloan’s view is a humanist account of decision making