Don’t call it intuition. Rather, call it a rapid cognitive response that delivers, in the blink of time, the best decision you can make, the most accurate perception of a situation, the best pathway to success. According to author Malcolm Gladwell in his book Blink, the actions you take based on your most immediate thoughts and perceptions are the ones that most often serve you best and drive your best course of action.
Blink is a book that takes you on an intellectual journey. If you have a tendency to over-analyze, this book brings you back down to the firm footing of the planet Earth and your own intellectual and emotional capital. It provides reassurance that the snap judgments you make every day, on items of simple or supreme importance, can be trusted.
You’ll see this at work with prospective students with a successful campus visit. They’ll take it all in. Connect with a current student. Encounter a friendly professor. Find something in the environment that they respond to emotionally. Then, in a blink, they know they’re home. They know your institution is where they want to go to college. All of the external is internalized.
How much do colleges design their campus visits, or communications programs for that matter, around the tiny but critical stimuli that add up to awakening a student’s motivation to attend? Not enough. But they could.
Learn more about Malcolm Gladwell and his other best selling books at www.gladwell.com.
