ABSTRACT
Ask the former governor of the seventh largest state, the CEO of the largest independent soft drink manufacturer, or the COO of the nation’s largest business advocacy organization if you can be a great leader without using intuition, and the answer is a resounding “No.” Although the three leaders use different words to describe intuition and how they use it, all agree that intuition has provided the competitive differential for many of their major successes. Having worked with all of them at some point in my own career in both the public and private sectors, as well as in politics, I can attest to their skilled use of intuition to make decisions. In my own experience running the trade association that represents the $140 billion US-based nonalcoholic beverage industry, I am in complete concurrence with their assessment of the value of intuition to effective leadership.
