By NG YOU JING
Critical thinking is one of the essential skills that contribute to an individual’s career success, regardless of one’s profession.
A recent insight by Guthrie-Jensen Global Training Consultants shows that it is the second most vital skill we’ll need to thrive in 2020 after complex problem solving, especially with Industry 4.0.
Meanwhile, a skills survey by the American Management Association in 2012 indicates that only 40.6% of surveyed employers rate their employees’ critical thinking skill as above average.
The good news is anyone can train their minds to think critically.
In essence, it’s the ability to analyse details and make rational judgment in order to solve problems.
Other skills like strategic thinking, design thinking, and analytical thinking are also important for those who aspire to become a leader in the digital age, since they help build a strong foundation for better decision-making capability – yet another skill needed to thrive in the future of work.
Let’s dive deeper.
Great apes are thinking and planning ahead. What more humans?
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1. Strategic thinking
In the evolving VUCA (for volative, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world of work, the ability to make timely decisions to acclimatise and adapt to disruptions remains some of the top challenges in any industry.
The concept of strategic thinking can be explained as a cognitive thinking process that involves a thorough assessment of the situation, therefore able to deliver the most favourable decision.
You need to look at the bigger picture when placed in the position of a decision maker, especially in the business context.
Before arriving at any conclusion, keep your stakeholders’ opinions and interests in your thinking process so that your decision will lead in a win-win situation.
Applying strategic thinking requires deep interactions with people. Essentially, it is expected of you to involve everyone in your team or across teams.
The most important aspect of thinking strategically is to recognise the small details that make all the difference, through which you can seize the competitive advantages to achieve your goals.
2. Design thinking
Most people approach a situation by diving head first into the problems, whereas design thinking is quite unique – it focuses on the solutions.
To employ the art and design methodology into other areas of work, you must first develop a complete understanding of your target audience, for example your customers, to discover their unmet needs and design the best solutions to their challenges.
Design thinking allows you to stay innovative while minimising the risks that come with any new development.
Be it to create a new workflow or introduce a new policy, you need to engage your stakeholders from the very beginning to understand their behaviours and challenges, instead of implementing solutions without trial.
From there, you’ll be able to monitor the effectiveness of your solution based on actual insights.
3. Analytical thinking
To boost your critical thinking skill, pay attention to visual analytics too. It involves gathering, organising, and analysing information to identify the key areas that contain valuable insights.
Oftentimes, you will need to work with various data sets or information sources to compare the pros and cons of each potential solution.
Keep in mind the importance of acquiring quality and relevant data to avoid information overload.
Analytical thinking can be applied to any circumstance, especially in the problem-solving process.
Critical thinking practices in the workplace
Some of the substantial effects that critical thinking practices have in the workplace include:
1. Human resources (HR)
As HR function entails people engagement matters, it is expected of them to be the key to workplace harmony and employee wellbeing.
Therefore, the decision of whether to reward or reprimand employees should be based on facts and analytics.
Oftentimes, a manager needs to look at the overall team performance before assessing individual results.
Critical thinking allows you to deliver fair assessment and avoid personal biases.
2. Marketing
Perhaps one of the most critical field of work that requires critical thinking skills, marketing involves every aspect of the problem-solving process.
A marketeer who utilises strategic thinking to develop a smart marketing plan will yield better outcomes as compared to those who rely on pure assumptions.
In other words, the most crucial part of any marketing campaign is research, which requires not only data collection but also data analysis.
Without such insights, you won’t be able to identify the optimum approach to reach and engage potential customers.
3. Sales
At the end of the marketing funnel lies the responsibilities of sales professionals, who are often faced with high expectations from potential customers.
In this sector, you would understand the significance of buyer personas in developing the right pitch.
Without relevant information and most importantly, design thinking approach, you will less likely close the deals.
Stages of critical thinking
As you dive into the process, it is best to familiarise the characteristics of a critical thinker for a better understanding.
1. Knowledge
You need to reflect on your experiences of overcoming similar challenges. Don’t take impulsive actions. Think back about how you solved certain issues as a compass to determine the most effective strategies that will lead to a desired outcome.
Example of questions to get started:
- Why did this method work for me previously?
- Why are these factors essential to my current situation? How do I take advantage of them?
- How can I use my past experience to solve the problem?
2. Awareness
The objective now is to establish a comprehensive understanding of the current challenges in reference to the historical insights from the previous stage.
You can learn to adopt critical thinking into the process of planning, differentiating, transcribing, and interpreting the obstacles that you are facing.
Better yet, look at it from different perspectives.
This is the tipping point where critical thinkers differentiate between truth and perspective, cause and effect, and opinion and speculation.
Example of questions to get started:
- What is the current situation?
- From which perspective should I observe this situation?
- How do I manage it based on my understanding of the challenge
3. Application
Consider all the hypothetical solutions to overcome the challenge.
It can be done by utilising your knowledge and use insights that you have attained from Steps 1 and 2.
Before taking any action, remind yourself not to settle for the first solution that comes to your mind without exploring other ways.
What matters is the possibility, not probability. It is important that you maintain an open mind, and be ready for a different route to obtain another solution.
Example of questions to get started:
- What are the options I should consider to increase my chances of success?
- What is the potential outcome if I take a particular action?
- What are the alternatives that I should consider to achieve the most ideal results?
4. Analysis
This is the part where you put them all together for critical analysis. With all the information and insights that you’ve gained so far, you will be able to foresee the effect of each course of action and its worst-case scenario, too.
Example of questions to get started:
- How is this relevant?
- What is the relationship between…?
- What distinctions can be made between…?
- What other possibilities can be justified through this?
5. Evaluation
In the final stage of critical thinking, you will need to be ready to reaffirm the validity of the solutions you’ve brought forward.
Focus on making a set of conditions to determine the potential answers to your own questions.
Example of questions to get started:
- How certain am I of the actual outcomes?
- What sort of solution do I have if…?
- What new developments can I gain from it?
Share with us your thoughts on critical thinking and the future skills of tomorrow by writing to us at editor@leaderonomics.com. We would love to hear from you! To engage with us on your organisational needs through our various corporate programmes, email us at info@leaderonomics.com.
This article is contributed by Jobstore.com.
Prefer an e-mag reading experience? This article is also available in our 27th October, 2018 digital issue. Access our digital issues here.
Original post date: 12th December, 2017
The post It’s Time To Challenge Your Critical Thinking Skills For The Future Of Work appeared first on Leaderonomics.com.