If you think your gut defies the odds and is right most of the time, I’d suggest four possibilities that might explain your perceived infallibility: disqualification, incomplete information, tossing coins and reading clues. Disqualification is the tendency to embrace what confirms and overlook what contradicts. People whose guts are right “most of the time” often forget or disqualify the times they were wrong. Incomplete information is another problem. In some organizations, saying the boss was mistaken is career-limiting, so news of failures never makes it to the top. Information fails to surface for other reasons, too. If you feel, but can’t verify, that your advertising produces sales, you really don’t know if your ads are working or not. You just think you know. If your gut really is right most of the time it’s possible you may be a lucky coin flipper. As one author has observed, if you flip a coin long enough, you will encounter short streaks. On average, he notes, you’ll flips five heads or tails consecutively once in every 32 sequences of five tosses. If your gut really has been right most of the time, beware: The next toss may betray you. It’s also possible that, instead of having an infallible gut, you’re adept at reading clues. Now, you may say, “Fine. Call it gut intuition or reading clues. Either way, I’m never wrong.” But retrospect makes it hard to distinguish clue-reading from whimsy. Did your gut tell you a job interview went well or were you attuned to the interviewer’s positive clues? And reading clues is subject to error. The brightest people misread clues, fail to see clues or see non-existent clues. You may read clues well. But don’t bet your marketing budget on it. Steve Cuno Click here to read more about how marketers can avoid gut-driven decisions. Large Business, Medium Business, Opinion, Small Business