Critical Thinking - Half-day Snapshot

Overview

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers – people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.

– Edward O. Wilson

Much has been written about ‘learning organizations,’ but a critical element of organisational learning – how staff think – has so far received little attention. Any organisation serious about improving its performance needs to address the ‘thinking’ dimension of organisational learning.

Critical thinking – going beyond the passive acceptance of information to examine where that information came from, how it was put together and how it has been presented – is fundamental to sound reasoning and decision-making. Indeed, critical thinking is considered by many to be a competency akin to reading and writing. In a world where we are, to borrow Edward O. Wilson’s description, drowning in information and starving for wisdom, critical thinking is the way forward.

This Snapshot provides a practical, hands-on introduction to critical thinking as well as a series of techniques and practical tools to your develop your own critical thinking and foster it in others.

Doubt may be an uncomfortable position but certainty is a ridiculous one.

– Voltaire

Topics Covered

This Snapshot covers topics such as:

• The limits of everyday thinking
• How our training – and our organisation – can constrain our thinking
• The benefits of improved critical thinking
• The cognitive skills and dispositions associated with critical thinking
• How to become a more critical thinker
• How to foster critical thinking in others
• How to help create a ‘thinking organisation’
• Tips for getting started tomorrow
• Techniques and tools to promote and assist critical thinking

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

– William James

Who should attend

This Snapshot will benefit anyone with an interest in organisational learning, sound decision-making, and/or improved thinking skills and is relevant to managers as well as front-line staff. If your organisation works with information on a daily basis and/or if you’ve ever recognised aspects of your organisation in a Dilbert cartoon, then this Snapshot is for you.

Most discussions of decision-making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives’ decisions matter – this is a dangerous mistake.

– Peter Drucker

Outcomes

Critical thinking skills are precisely that – skills which can be taught and developed.

You will learn why improved critical thinking is critical to building a smarter organisation as well as specific techniques and practical tools to develop your own critical thinking and foster it in others.
In practical terms, this means staff who are better able to:

• Judge the validity, relevance, and usefulness of the information they deal with on a daily basis; and
• Make sound decisions based on that information.

Human beings are a credulous lot… in the absence of good grounds for belief, we are satisfied with bad ones.

– Bertrand Russe