Sound thinking or indigestion?

Stroll through the aisles of the business section of your local bookstore and you're likely to see two primary schools of thought about what constitutes sound corporate decision-making practice.

School number one is populated by authors who believe that every substantive decision should be backed up by a flurry of research that fully evaluates the optimistic, realistic and pessimistic outcomes of each potential direction.

The other school consists of scribes who purport that, most of the time, good decisions are made by people who simply go with what their "gut" is saying. Jack Welch, the famous CEO of GE even wrote about this philosophy in his best seller, Straight from the Gut (although a careful read shows that while Welch abhors bureaucracy, he didn't get to where he is by being foolhardy either...).

The latest book to enter the fray is Blink, by New Yorker magazine writer Malcolm Gladwell. His second successive best seller (following 2002's The Tipping Point), Blink presents evidence that each of us has the capacity to make sound decisions quickly and with limited data, if we just have the courage to get out of our own way.

Gladwell documents his case by looking at such diverse examples as a war games exercise in which the leader of the winning side went against conventional wisdom and outfoxed the competition, to how Warren Harding was elected president despite having no meaningful skills, to how certain art experts just knew an expensive statue was a fake even when tests suggested it was genuine.

Those who succeed have the ability to "thin-slice," that is, to quickly and unconsciously break down a situation based on their own narrow "slices" of experience with similar instances. In doing so, he says, they quickly sort out the valuable from the trite, and can often make a good decision quite rapidly.

While he admits the approach is not foolproof, he believes that honing our ability to sort through the thin slices of each situation will guide us to when we can trust our instincts.

So where does this theory leave marketing communications professionals? When do we shoot from the hip, and when do we fall back on reams of research? Here are a few thoughts based on Gladwell's basic premise:

• Don't reinvent wheels - If something's working, resist the temptation to change it. Remember, if it's intended for an external audience, about the time you're getting bored, they're finally noticing it. And too much change with internal audiences sends unintended messages.

• Pay attention to trends - You'll feel better about trusting your communications instincts if you come up for air once in a while. Get interested in an industry outside your field, and watch what they're up to. You'll be surprised at how it'll make you more creative and confident in your day-to-day assignments.

• Remember that research is a tool - Those same bookshelves are filled with case studies of companies who made a decision "because the research said to," and lived to regret it. Even the best, most expensive research comes with a margin of error. Consider it one part of the process, not the lone authority.

The message? When you think you're right, you may just be - even if you don't know why. When the stakes are modest, give yourself permission to go with your gut once in a while, and see what happens.