By the time executives get to high levels, they are good at making others feel confident in their judgment, even if there's no strong basis for the judgment.

It is instructive to see how organizations pursue their goal of reducing errors and uncertainty. They impose standards, employ checklists, demand that knowledge workers list assumptions for their conclusions and document all sources. These actions either directly interfere with forming insights or create an environment where insights and discoveries are treated with suspicion because they might lead to errors. They signal to knowledge workers that their job is not to make mistakes. Even if they don't make discoveries, no one can blame them as long as they don't make mistakes.

First, the skill of storytelling helps to galvanize your team. Second, the discipline of storytelling requires leaders to be clear about their intentions and to prioritize what fits into the story versus secondary goals and issues. Third, there is possibly an artifact here - great storytellers can make their exploits and achievements sound very exciting and memorable. Successful leaders who are not good storytellers won't get the acknowledgement and appreciation they deserve.

People sometimes are so confident in their flawed beliefs that they get stuck - fixated - and as a result are blinded to insights that are right in front of them.

I worry about leaders in complex situations who don't have enough experience, who are just going with their intuition and not monitoring it, not thinking about it.

You shouldn't trust the judgments of stock brokers picking individual stocks.

Intuition is when we use our experience, and the patterns we have learned, to rapidly size up situations and know how to respond without going through deliberate analysis. Intuitions depend on the patterns we have acquired. Insight is about gaining new patterns.