First, your inner creative Essence provides the quality of intuition: a direct knowing without conscious reasoning. Intuition has always been a powerful mainstay of great business, but until fairly recently it has been denied as a business tool in the era of overdependence of analysis…

A second quality, will, begins to fill in the picture. It is the part of you that can take responsibility. It is the ground of your creative actions. People who are creative in business have a compelling vision or mission, and this exemplifies will…

The third quality of Essence is joy. This book could have been called The Joy of Business because, for all the work and frequent difficulty that creativity entails, it always brings a sense of joy. When you get a hint of your own creativity or potential, you always feel this bright, shimmering quality of joy. It is best related to the art quality of balance. When you have balance within yourself and between all parts of your life, you experience the joy of the flow of creativity.

We often talk about creativity in terms of breakthrough. And to break through a wall of fear and criticism that might stop you, you need a fourth quality, strength. Creative business people take appropriate risks. Their strength allows them to do that without even seeing risks as risky. This inner strength overcomes fear….

Finally, you can draw on a fifth quality of Essence, compassion, to completely bring your creativity into the world. This compassion isn’t the mushiness of do-gooders. Instead it is loving kindness, first for yourself and then for others. When you operate from this compassion you nurture your own ability, recognise your own creativity and that of others. It causes you to experience the ultimate Eureka! feeling of “I Am.” Creative business people can implement their creativity so well because they have that confidence in their own creativity and bring it out in others too. Compassion of this sort is best related to the art principle of harmony, and you can see how it creates harmony, not only among all the qualities of Essence but also in your business life.

Intuition complements reason. Blaise Pascal, the great French philosopher, mathematician and physicist, says:

We know the truth, not only by reason but also by the heart.

Psychologist Carl Jung said:

The term [intuition] does not denote something contrary to reason, but something outside the providence of reason.

Jonas Salk, the discoverer of polio vaccine, has recently been investigating the roots of creativity. Salk told Time correspondent Peter Stoler in an interview in Psychology Today:

I’m saying that we should trust our intuition. I believe that the principles of universal evolution are revealed to us through our intuition. And I think that if we combine our intuition and our reason, we can respond in an evolutionary sound way to our problems…

Listening to intuition is not the act of concentrating on what you think you want. It is not hedonism, a move toward the most pleasurable short-term alternative. It is not giving vent to the inner emotional child left over from your infancy. It is simply paying clear attention, without mind chatter and emotions, to the most appropriate alternative that comes from the creative Essence.

Our speakers seem to tell us that intuition kicks in precisely when they move through the stress and the frustration to a calm, clear state beyond. At that moment, the appropriate action appears almost as a solid conviction: take the case of Robert Medearis. Instead of emotion, he prefers to talk about energy:

I think everybody has a certain amount of energy about them. And I think that one of the critically important things is to allow that energy to take place. Don’t be afraid of it, don’t try to channel it. Let it emerge. Because that energy is the source, it’s the food for the idea… Allow it to ferment, allow it to come out, allow it to bubble up if you will even though you might think that it’s somewhat negative in origin. Allow it to manifest.

The best models will always fail at some point. CEOs must combine information with intuition in decision-making. They must deploy informed intuition. This is not simply going with one’s gut. A good definition of informed intuition is “the process of blending existing information and data with one’s experiences, educated assumptions, and instincts to arrive at a logical conclusion.” Relying on it is always important, but it becomes even more so in the second year, as you’re moving further out from the initial assessment of your strategic agenda. Informed intuition also requires taking the people component into account. Call it the social side of strategy: marrying the people and performance components. Numbers and analysis and logic only get you so far when you are in the fog of war.

Rigorous data analytics should inform intuitive thinking. Shantanu Narayen, for example, stressed its role in his decision to move Adobe to cloud-based service. The process involved “a lot of discipline,” he said. “We ran pilot in some countries. We got feedback. People give us credit for bold decisions. But we put in a lot of work.” Yet, when asked how he evolved as a CEO, he said, “I got much more comfortable with pattern matching.” Discerning a pattern you’ve seen before in a new situation is one of the signature abilities of informed intuition. But spotting patterns, as Narayen cautioned, can be “both a plus and a minus.” Doing it well requires building up a robust mental archive of patterns seen through time. With that strong repertoire, pattern matching can be remarkably powerful. Without that archive, it can go badly awry. But even with good experience, it’s easy to fall into the trap of confirmation bias— seeing a pattern because you expect it to be there. It’s essential to rigorously challenge your intuitions.

Narayen emphasized that to ensure you’re both listening to your intuition and checking it, it’s important to create a process for combining your informed intuition with that of others, as Paz did.