Critical thinking
Intro
Critical thinking is both a mindset and the application of some real simple tools.
critical thinking techniques like:
- defining the real problem: root cause
- Tools
- the five why’s
- the seven so what’s
- the 80/20 rule: will the solution have a disproportionate impact on the organization
- High road: how to conduct insightful analysis. and link the high level problems with the analysis conducted
Understnading Critical Thinking
The importance:
Don’t: we rush off and start solving it without stopping to think before we do.
Increasing conplexity of trying to get an answer
- new demands that require extensive amounts of information before we can make a decision
- multiple departments involved and each department is contributing its own input.
- multiple stakeholders involved
those big decisions will involve numerous trade-offs long lag times in acquiring the required data to make your decision high scrutiny over whether you were right or wrong a bad call can have both business as well as personal and professional implications.
unforeseen bottlenecks, multiply it by the number of problems you’re trying to solve every single day, and then divide by the limited amount of time you have to get to an answer.
The importance of stopping and thinking critically before you rush off and undertake all these very comprehensive efforts is very high. That critical thinking process is what’s going to differentiate you and the solutions you develop versus rushing off without any thought at all.
Distinguish causes vs consequences
Don’t: desire to rush off and get to an answer quickly
Critical Thinking Process
- Causes: Think backwards to identify causes, what is the root cause of the problem, solve a problem, not a symptom
- Evaluate symptons
- Find the root cause
- Consequences: think forward to identify consequences
- What new problems will be created?
- What are the new symptoms that will be caused
Break big problems into small ones
Spending the critical thinking time breaking the big problem down into smaller and smaller ones is going to enable you to take those first smaller steps at solving the big problem.
- What’s that big problem composed of?
- What are the smaller issues that are driving the big problem?
- continue breaking those big problems down into smaller and smaller ones until you say, “Oh, I know how I might solve that component of it.”
When you can start seeing the solutions emerge, you’re moving from that problem identification stage to a problem solving stage, and the time you invest in dimensionalizing this problem solving space is going to help you solve problems more quickly and more effectively.