You need to take your gut feeling as an important data point, but then you have to consciously and deliberately evaluate it, to see if it makes sense in this context.

Most corporate decisions aren't going to meet the test of high validity. But they're going to be way above the low-validity situations that we worry about.

Many change initiatives are poorly thought out, and rolled out prematurely. Others are genuinely good ideas but the proponents underestimate the amount of time needed to make the change. And, I agree, true change usually requires people giving something up and so resistance is pretty well guaranteed for any meaningful change.

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.

Many business intuitions and expertise are going to be valuable; they are telling you something useful, and you want to take advantage of them.

Society's epitome of credibility is John Wayne, who sizes up a situation and says, "Here's what I'm going to do" - and you follow him.

Rigor is not a substitute for imagination.