Critical and Creative Thinking

How to Recharge Your BA Skills

Thinking Approaches

• Strategic Thinking

• Critical Thinking

• Creative Thinking

Strategic Thinking

Looking at a situation from a broad and long term future perspective to set a direction

Critical Thinking

The intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, or

evaluating information…as a guide to belief or action.

- Dr. Richard Paul, Director of Research at the Center for Critical Thinking and Moral Critique

Critical Thinking:Another Definition

Applying a process to open-ended, unstructured problems.

- Wolcott and Lynch

Critical Thinking Helps You:

• Make wise and reasoned decisions• Communicate more effectively• Identify root causes of problems• Determine how to solve critical business

problems and leverage opportunities• Work effectively with challenging

stakeholders and customers

Critical Thinking in 4 Steps

1. Identify the problem, the relevant information, and all the uncertainties about the problem.

2. Explore interpretations and connections.3. Prioritize alternatives and communicate

conclusions.4. Integrate, monitor, and refine strategies for

re-addressing the problem.

A Well-Cultivated Critical Thinker:

• Raises vital questions and problems clearly and precisely

• Gathers, assesses, and interprets relevant information and comes to well-reasoned conclusions

• Thinks open-mindedly; checks their ego• Communicates effectively with others

Adapted from The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools

Knowledge of a Critical Thinker

• Business knowledge beyond one’s own function• Understanding internal & external forces affecting

the business• Self awareness of one’s own limits and

qualifications• Knowledge of the business network (influence)• Knowledge of available resources (solutions)

Behaviors of a Critical Thinker

• Prioritizes issues properly by importance• Gathers and assesses relevant issues• Detects errors in reasoning• Evaluates evidences and makes proper inferences• Removes inconsistency and ambiguity• Listens carefully and explores new ideas• Willing to take unpopular stances• Communicates effectively to solve complex problems

Mindset of a Critical Thinker

• Fair and open-minded even with people one disagrees with

• Seeks the truth and the best action• Takes ownership in solving business problems• Willing to change one’s point of view• Examines ideas that may seem obvious

Critiquing Your Own Thinking

1. Clarify your thinking2. Stick to the point3. Question questions4. Be reasonable

Action Plan for Critical Thinking

• Identify one of your biggest strengths in critical thinking.

• Identify one of your biggest hurdles to your continued development in critical thinking.

• Write down an action that you will do to overcome that hurdle.

How to Stymie Your Critical Thinking

• Surround yourself with people who think like you; go along with your crowd

• Don’t question your relationships• Take critiques from others personally• Make excuses for personal failures• Be negative• Blame others• Focus on getting what YOU want

Overusing Critical Thinking

• Spending too much time debating and gathering information

• Asking too many questions and not focusing on relevant issues

• Over-reliance on too many perspectives• Challenging ideas in ways that stifle innovation

and frustrate others

Creative Thinking

Generating new ideas and concepts, as well as finding new associations between or new

applications of existing ideas and concepts.

- BABOK Guide, Version.2.0, Chapter 8.1.1

The Adjacent Possible

• Combining the existing into new results• Term coined by Stuart Kauffman• Requires diversity

What are you doing to encourageThe Adjacent Possible?

Liquid Networks

• Environments where ideas are allowed to flow and collide

• Need to balance order and chaos

How can you modify your environmentto incorporate characteristics

of a Liquid Network?

The Slow Hunch

• Events and information that are not acted upon due to a lack of supporting information

• Requires a dense Liquid Network to come to fruition

Can you think of a Slow Hunch that took a long time to be realized?

Error• Good ideas are more likely to emerge in

environments that contain a certain amount of noise and error.

• Problem: We tend to avoid error or dismiss them outright

How might your tendency to avoid error be stifling creativity in your business and

personal environments?

Clearing Your Mind

1. Employ the “rotation method”2. Get the picture3. Change the subject4. Embrace the unfamiliar5. Foretell the future

Adapted from Clearing the Mind for Creativity, by John Kao

Something to Try…

• At your next meeting, have each person bring a “supply” of some type (sticky notes, pens, paper clips, staples, etc.).

• Put them all in the middle of the conference room table.

• As a group (not independently), build the tallest structure you can within 5 minutes.

• Now see how the ideas flow!

References• Becoming a Critic of Your Thinking by Dr. Linda Elder and Dr. Richard Paul• The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools, by Dr. Richard

Paul and Dr. Linda Elder• The Thinker’s Guide to the Art of Strategic Thinking: 25 Weeks to Better

Thinking and Better Living ,by Dr. Richard Paul and Dr. Linda Elder• CriticalThinking.org• Critical Thinking Process by Wolcott and Lynch• Clearing the Mind for Creativity by John Kao• Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven

Johnson• How to Get Ideas by Jack Foster• Cirque Du Soleil, The Spark: Igniting the Creative Fire that Lives Within Us

All by Lyn Heward and John U. Bacon

Thank you for joining us!

Questions?

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