Lessons from “Good Minds”: How CEOs Use Intuition, Analysis and Guiding Principles to Make Strategic Decisions

This paper examines how decision makers manage complex situations by combining rational analysis with intuition. Based on a study of 19 oil company CEOs, it identifies two processes used by the most effective CEOs: integration by essentials (IBE) and spiralling. Besides using these two processes, the effective CEOs shared three thinking-related traits: focus, motivation and self-awareness. The paper concludes with implications for effective decision making.