The Science of Good Decisions
by Betty Mertens, Director of Client Success
I’d like to think I’m good at making decisions.
I try to gather the facts, think objectively, and arrive at a balanced solution. I want to believe I’m the kind of person who can look at a situation clearly, weigh the options, and make a smart call without getting too tangled up in emotion or bias.
Sometimes that’s true. But the more experience I gain, the more I realize that good decision-making is far messier than that.
Even when I think I’m being rational, there are other factors at play: instinct, preference, past experience, stress, fear, hope, urgency, and honestly sometimes just the desire to pick any path so I can move forward.
That’s what makes the science behind decision-making so interesting. In 2001, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt published a paper in Psychological Review called The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail. His argument was that intuition drives judgment, and reasoning often steps in afterward to justify it. Daniel Kahneman later reinforced this idea in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, where he described two systems of thought: one fast and emotional, the other deliberate and analytical.
Which one tends to drive the decision? Usually the fast one. The slower one arrives with a polished explanation.
That idea has stayed with me because it explains so much of what decision-making actually feels like. We do not always reason our way to a conclusion. Often, we sense our way there first.
That becomes especially important in marketing.
The Marketing Problem
Marketing rarely offers a clean, obvious right answer. Leaders are navigating multiple audiences, competing messages, expanding channels, and countless creative directions, all without a flashing arrow telling them which path to take.
So leaders respond to what feels right.
“I just have a sense this won’t land.”
“I don’t like that direction.”
“This feels more on-brand.”
The reasoning that follows sounds thoughtful and strategic, but the emotional reaction came first.
Add internal pressure, career or financial risk, and the fear of making the wrong call, and suddenly the explanation becomes airtight.
That does not mean intuition is bad. In many cases, it is incredibly valuable. Intuition helps us move, notice patterns, and respond when something feels off before we can fully explain why. But like any decision-making tool, its usefulness depends on what has shaped it.
Good Decisions Require More Than Instinct
A study published in BMJ Journals looked at how physicians use clinical intuition when diagnosing patients. What researchers found was fascinating: experienced doctors could often sense when something was wrong before the data fully confirmed it. Less experienced doctors were far less reliable in those instincts.
That tracks. Years of exposure sharpen pattern recognition. Repeated decisions, real consequences, wins, mistakes, and constant learning all shape better judgment over time. Refined instinct becomes compressed expertise.
Marketing is no different. An experienced strategist brings perspective shaped by repetition and exposure to various marketing problems. They do not know your business better than you do, but they may be able to see what is harder to spot from the inside.
That outside perspective is extremely valuable. Nobody really talks about how proximity has a cost. When you are so close to the work, it becomes harder to see your own assumptions clearly. You get used to your language, your logic, your preferences, and the internal story you have told so many times before. Sometimes what can take you to the next level is a better challenge. Someone to pressure test your reasoning and help you see what you can no longer see on your own.
It’s not a threat to intuition. It is how intuition gets sharper. It is also how risk gets reduced.
The best strategic work helps teams ask better questions. What problem are we actually solving? Is this a messaging issue, a positioning issue, an audience issue, or an internal alignment issue? Are we responding to evidence, or reacting to pressure?
That kind of testing creates a different level of confidence. A steadier kind that comes from knowing your thinking has been challenged before the stakes are raised.
I think AI makes this even more important. It can generate ideas, language, and strategic starting points in seconds, which is incredibly useful. But it also removes some of the friction that used to slow us down and force us to think more carefully. And while friction is not exactly beloved (speaking for myself), it does train intuition. It makes us wrestle with tradeoffs, interrogate assumptions, and sit with uncertainty a little longer before we decide.
When that friction disappears, it gets easier to move fast without noticing what has gone untested. AI can accelerate output, but it cannot tell you whether the underlying judgment is sound. If anything, it makes experienced outside perspective more valuable, because speed without reflection can send a team faster than ever in the wrong direction.
So to me, the science of good decisions is not about removing emotion from the process. It is about refining instinct through experience, testing assumptions before they harden into strategy, and building better conditions for wise judgment.
It’s about knowing when to trust your gut and when your gut needs backup. If you’re navigating a moment where the stakes feel high and the answers feel murky, just know you don’t have to sort it out alone.
We’d be honored to be your co-pilot.
