Step inside The Intuitive Advantage, a ten-part series on how intuition, AI, and experience will shape 2026. In Part Two, Future Platforms CEO and MAD//Fest host, Livia Bernardini, reveals why leaders feel intuition before data and why mistaking habit or fear for instinct could make or break their biggest decisions.

Last Monday in Part One we explored why predictions are really prompts for attention.
If certainty is out of reach, intuition becomes the quiet ally that tells you where to look next. This week we go deeper into the thing leaders feel most strongly and talk about least.
The moment a feeling lands before any data is even ready to have an opinion.
Some of the most meaningful decisions in business began exactly there.

We do not fail because we ignore intuition. We fail because we mistake conditioning for intuition. Fear can feel like instinct. Habit can feel like certainty. Old emotional patterns can feel like expertise. This blurring is the intuition gap, the space where a true instinct collides with a lifetime of learned responses. Recognising that difference will matter more than ever in 2026.

Instinct Leads, Logic Catches Up. Freedom comes from Intuition

Take Airbnb. Three designers and an instinct that someone might pay to sleep on an air mattress in their apartment. Zero data. If you were born before 1980, like me, you remember how outrageous the idea sounded. I listed my spare room early and was called a weirdo more than once. Conditioning was loud, and it sounded like this: “Hotels are the only sensible option.” “It is not wise to sleep in a stranger’s bed.” “Do not let a stranger anywhere near your kitchen tools.” And yet intuition caught a behavioural shift long before the world called it the sharing economy. Airbnb only feels obvious now because the world eventually caught up.

And this does not only apply to the golden child of startups. Too easy.

At Netflix, one of the most influential CMOs in modern marketing defended intuition even while sitting on one of the richest datasets in the world. Founder Reed Hastings said: "We start with the data. But the final call is always gut. It’s informed intuition.” Bozoma Saint John, Chief Marketing Officer from 2020 to 2021, went further: “We are being liberated from the endless weight of data. It keeps us bound so that we can't move into the future, because we're so busy being tied to the past. So how do we get free? The freedom comes from our intuition.”

Even with perfect dashboards, their boldest decisions were the ones that felt true long before they were provable. Their stories reveal something we rarely say out loud. Intuition is not mysterious. It is your body noticing what matters before your rational mind has the language for it.

Why Leaders Mistrust Their Gut

Inside organisations, intuition has a PR problem. We celebrate it in founders. We admire it in global success stories. We can’t get enough biographies. Inside boardrooms however, it becomes an inconvenience.

We hide it behind presentations that are too long. We apologise for it with sentences that begin, “I know this sounds unscientific but…”. We over-justify it with an ocean of data to make the instinct feel respectable. This is where the trouble begins.

We do not mistrust intuition. We mistrust the things we confuse with intuition.
Too often what we call intuition is something else entirely: Conditioning. Bias. Fear. Habit. And a generous sprinkle of unresolved childhood patterns that have more influence on adult decision making than any of us would like to admit.

The trouble is that to an untrained body, intuition and conditioning often feel identical.
The good news is that they are not. And here is the difference.

Intuition points toward what is emerging. Conditioning protects what is familiar.

The feeling, however, it’s very very different. Intuition feels like expanding energy. Conditioning feels like fight or flight.

I used to confuse the two every day and call them both instinct. Then I learned the difference, and my world changed. If you are unsure whether something is intuition or conditioning, try this:

- The Direction Test: Is this pulling me forward or protecting something familiar?

- The Pattern Test: Is this based on what I am noticing or what I am fearing?

- The Stakes Test: If I am wrong, what do I lose? If I am right, what becomes possible?

Intuition feels informative. Conditioning feels protective. The distinction is subtle yet transformative.

When We Challenged Conventional Wisdom 

The received wisdom is that personalisation drives engagement. Most product teams work from this universal truth. So when we built the LIV Golf app, we personalised the experience around favourite teams and individual preferences.

The data disagreed. Personalised feeds meant fewer sessions and shorter dwell time.

Only when we went to a live tournament did the answer appear. Golf is alive in every direction. You hear cheering three holes away. Applause you cannot see. Action you know you are missing. The FOMO is physical.

The insight landed fast. Personalisation helps you focus, but it also hides the bigger picture – the very thing fans crave.

So we changed course. Less filtering by team. More visibility of emerging moments. Live pulses showing where the energy was. Community based games to connect fans to the full event so the experience was widened, not narrowed.

Conventional wisdom said personalise more. Our intuition, shaped by what we felt on that course, said the opposite. The increased frequency and duration of engagement proved that our gut delivered the wiser commercial outcome.

Why This Matters For Leaders In 2026

Next year will reward leaders who can act before the evidence is tidy. I am not predicting the future, but here’s what I am paying attention to:

Data Overload Will Make Judgment the Differentiator

We are drowning in information and starving for meaning. Conditioning still insists that more data must mean better decisions, yet what we really need in 2026 is intentionality, insight and a clear hunch about where to go next. Human sets the intent, the AI explores the possibilities, Human hunch sets the new direction. Leaders who sense the need for fewer, sharper questions rather than more dashboards will outperform those waiting for analytics to think on their behalf. As data becomes almost infinite, judgment, intuition and experience become the sharp edge.

Community Becomes Context

When uncertainty is high, a strong community becomes a stabiliser. But community only works when treated as a core product, not a marketing add-on. Design for genuine peer value, co-creation and problem solving. When you create the right conditions, people stop behaving like customers and start behaving like stakeholders.

Curate Your Board Before AI Curates Your Thinking

We have been told for years that diverse and well curated Boards are essential. Most companies nod, run a workshop, change a slide and carry on as usual. But next year the stakes rise. As AI floods leaders with even more data and even more ready-made opinions, your Board becomes the counterweight. Diversity of thought is not a virtue signal. It is the only safeguard against algorithmic drift and collective wishful thinking. A well curated Board keeps your organisation thinking clearly when the signal gets noisy.

What’s Next?

In Part One we explored why predictions are really prompts for attention.

Today, we examined why intuition often gets mistaken for conditioning (and what to do about it).

Next Monday in Part Three we move from philosophy to practice.We will explore the red flags and green lights your body registers before your mind catches up. These are the micro signals that predict behaviour long before dashboards stabilise.

I will share the Intuition Decision Making Grid I developed during a guest lecture with Professor Julian Gomez at Hult, and show you how two of my biggest career swings, one award winning and one a decade too early, map perfectly onto it.

If intuition is the muscle, this series is the gym. I am not reading the future, simply sharing where I am placing my attention for the year ahead. I hope it helps you shape yours too

By the end, you will be working with AI in a calmer, sharper and far more intentional way.