Inflationary pressures see alcohol and fast food purchases decline
Danette Breitenbach
Missing ingredient: woman's intuition
Fundamental attributes of a business leader when guiding a corporation to success include the ability to rationally strategise and take control, while placing emphasis on conducting business in an efficient and objective manner. In a globalised world, and particularly during the current financial crisis, such attributes have however been found not to be sufficient to ensure a company achieves long term success. The recent South African study, Supply Chain Intelligence Report (SCIR) 2009, has indicated that intuition, supposedly one of women's defining characteristics, is a key component to a company's sustainability and success levels.
SCIR 2009 is based on a survey of over 200 senior South African company officials from a wide range of industries, and both a general management and supply chain perspective. After concluding that 6% of the total number of companies surveyed were 67% more profitable than their peers, the study sought to uncover how these companies came to be more profitable. A key driver in these companies' ability to achieve success ultimately proved to be their level of intuitive ability.
Having a hunch
Intuition can be defined as ‘the ability to sense or know immediately without reasoning', a characteristic largely attributed to women but often misinterpreted as an ‘emotionally based hunch'. The ability to be sensitive to and accurate when reading their surrounding environment has however been a skill of women for centuries. When a woman applies her intuition in the current economic environment she has the ability to read the signs of a changing market and make provision for their impact before the event horizon. Any company employing such skills would clearly be better positioned for success.
Intuition vs. rationality
While men lay claim to such characteristics as logic and rationality, the combination of a woman's intuition and her ability to see ‘shades of grey,' be highly collaborative and active at networking, open, sensitive and participative result in a potent formula for forecasting and overcoming challenges in a rapidly changing environment.
It wasn't so long ago that women in business were considered less capable than their male counterparts, and in some companies and countries the questioning of a woman's place in the working world still continues. The results of SCIR 2009 however, should help to put an end to such questioning - in the world of business presently and even more so in an uncertain future, to employ intuition is to ensure success.
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