Everyone's Talking About AI, But Not About Intuition

There’s a clip of former Uber, Netflix, Apple Music, and PepsiCo CMO, Bozoma St. John, discussing her career choices that has lived rent-free in my mind since I first saw it a few weeks ago. In the podcast interview, she talks about the importance of feeling and intuition and how they guided her career success, rather than strategy.

In my experience as a strategist, somatic practitioner, and diviner, I’m keenly aware of the power of intuition and how it can be strengthened like a muscle to guide not only personal and professional decision-making but also to source creativity and innovation. Yet, I’ve often observed that intuition is positioned in opposition to strategic thinking, especially in corporate business culture.

To be clear, when I speak about intuition, I’m referring to the internal sense of knowing that emerges from embodied experience, emotional intelligence, and unconscious pattern recognition—not guesswork or impulsivity. This form of cognitive processing, often referred to as tacit knowledge, enables quick discernment even when individuals cannot fully articulate the rationale behind their choices. However, I often see this misconstrued in business culture, where data is prioritized over gut feeling. We dismiss strategy that isn’t rooted in verifiable facts and label it as meritless. But what I’ve come to understand is that the most compelling strategy integrates both feeling and knowing (by way of data), working in tandem. 

And as we increasingly look to data, AI, algorithms, and machines to guide our decisions, I have to wonder: Are we losing connection with our capacity to feel—and what implications will this have for the future?

As AI continues to pervade advertising, media, and countless other industries, it’s also reshaping our critical thinking and creativity, with both benefits and challenges. In business, we tend to focus on performance markers like growth, speed, agility, efficiency, and access. But if everyone optimizes for these same benchmarks, eventually leveling the playing field, it will be original thought, embodied creativity, and human resonance that become the true differentiators.

This is why I believe intuition and feeling will become more essential than ever.
So why aren’t we talking more about them?

Part of the reason, I believe, is cultural. We’ve been raised in a society that prizes certainty, proven facts, and measurable outcomes. But creativity—real creativity--and resonance demands something different. It requires presence, imagination, emotional capacity, empathy, and crucially, the willingness to embrace the unknown.

Meanwhile, many of us are using AI quietly, almost secretly, vigilantly scrubbing our work of robotic phrasing and em dashes to present the appearance of humanity, creativity, and intentionality. And beneath that veneer lies a bigger question: What does it truly mean to be human in our work?

We don’t talk enough about the invisible labor it takes to harness our creativity—or how essential that labor will become in a world where tools are abundant, but embodied feeling is rare or reserved for every other place, except the workplace. While unchecked intuition can be clouded by bias, cultivated intuition, refined through self-awareness and somatic experiencing, can become a powerful strategic compass.

Given the growing number of us facing burnout, information overload, loneliness, and nervous system dysregulation, I can only hope we will take more time to reconnect with our feelings and sensory intelligence, even when it’s uncomfortable or inconvenient. With AI seemingly limiting our capacity for critical thinking, creativity, and open dialogue, we must normalize feeling and recognize intuition as the essential tool that it is.

I launched Evolv Creative Consulting to bridge the worlds of business and the intuitive arts. Too often, these realms feel separate and mutually exclusive, but I believe our future depends on our ability to more fully embody all aspects of ourselves and the innate wisdom that lies within.

That’s why we offer Creative Embodiment Workshops--spaces where leaders, teams, and creatives can practice what it means to feel, imagine, and innovate from a place of groundedness and wholeness.

To learn more, DM me, book an introductory call, or contact hello@evolvcreativeconsulting.com.