Can companies learn from speed dating? You bet.

I spent this past Canada Day stretched out on a lounge chair overlooking Moose Lake in Haliburton, ON, reading Blink, by Malcom Gladwell. Blink – hardly the fluffy read one might have chosen for the setting – is about split-second decisions: how we make them, when we should listen to them, and when we should not.

In his book, Gladwell argues that everyday our brain processes thousands of pieces of information. In order to make split-second decisions, our brain must ‘thin-slice’. More precisely, it must draw on the ability of our unconscious mind to find patterns in situations and behaviors based on very narrow slices of experience. Gladwell further suggests that a decision made in the blink of an eye can sometimes be more powerful than the ones we spend months researching and weighing out.