Trust the Feeling That Something's Off
Over the holidays, I spent time working on our old barn apartment. The previous owners had partially finished the second floor, leaving about two-thirds unfinished. Everything electrical up there works properly - lights, outlets, no tripped breakers, no flickering. By all observable measures, the wiring is fine.
But as I started documenting the circuits to plan the next phase of work, something didn't add up. The way certain outlets were grouped didn't match what I expected based on how the circuits were laid out. Nothing was broken, but the pattern felt wrong.
My intuition said to look deeper. So, I removed a few drywall panels to trace the wiring behind the wall.
What I found was a literal rat's nest. Chewed-through wires, exposed copper, insulation stripped away. A fire waiting for the right conditions. Everything on the surface worked fine because the damage hadn't progressed far enough to cause failure yet. But it was only a matter of time.
What Intuition Actually Is
Leaders often talk about intuition like it's mystical. It's not. It's pattern recognition based on accumulated experience. Your brain processes signals you can't consciously articulate yet - friction, inconsistency, workarounds becoming normalized - and tells you something's wrong before you can point to specific evidence.
The problem is we've been trained to dismiss that instinct when we can't prove it. "Everything's working, so why investigate?" But working and healthy aren't the same thing. Systems can function while slowly degrading. Do you investigate what you're sensing, or wait until the evidence is undeniable?
When Technology Operations Feel Off
This is what technology operations often look like in community health centers. Systems run. Tickets get resolved. Reports generate on schedule. But something feels off.
Staff complain about the same workarounds every quarter. Data doesn't quite match what you see in operations. Decisions that should take a week take a month because no one's quite sure what the systems can actually support. Leadership meetings about technology end with more questions than answers.
None of this is a crisis. Nothing's on fire. But the nagging sense that things could be better, or that you're one incident away from a real problem, doesn't go away.
That feeling exists for a reason.
What Happens When You Look Deeper
Sometimes you find the fire hazard. A security gap that hasn't been exploited yet. A process that's held together by one person's institutional knowledge. A vendor relationship that's delivering far less value than you're paying for.
Sometimes you confirm everything's actually fine, and the unease was just lack of visibility. You document what's working, understand why, and move forward with confidence instead of doubt.
Either way, you have clarity. And clarity enables better decisions than vague concern.
The Cost of Ignoring It
Ignoring intuition because you can't prove it yet is how small problems become crises. The wiring in my barn could have functioned for months or years before something finally failed. But when it did, the result would have been catastrophic - and preventable.
Technology operations work the same way. The system that "works fine" until it doesn't. The vendor who delivers acceptable service until they don't. The processes that hold together until the person who understands them leaves.
By the time the evidence is undeniable, your options are limited and expensive.
Validating What You're Sensing
You don't need certainty to look deeper. You need a way to validate whether your instinct points to something real.
That might mean asking harder questions during vendor reviews. It might mean having someone outside your organization evaluate whether your technology actually supports your mission. It might mean taking a structured look at the patterns you've been noticing but haven't had time to analyze.
Tools like the 7-Metric Assessment exist for this reason. They don't replace intuition. They organize it into something concrete you can act on. They give you language for what you've been sensing and help you determine whether deeper investigation is warranted.
The Real Skill
The real leadership skill isn't having perfect intuition. It's having the discipline to investigate when something feels wrong, even when you can't yet explain why.
Sometimes you'll be wrong. That's fine. Better to check and find nothing than ignore it and discover later you were sitting on a problem that could have been addressed early.
Trust the feeling that something's off. Then do the work to find out if you're right.