Critical Thinking in Modern Business Training

Editor's Notes

1. One fine morning, as I was just waking up, my wife said, sweetheart, I think that there is a leak in the shower. That seemed unlikely. You see – we have one of those form molded fiberglass insert showers from the 90’s. I mean by that – it is all one unified piece. There aren’t any seams, or cracks – and it goes all the way up over head – covering the entire shower area. Well it’s dripping on my head, she replied… Now I was of course curious, but I doubted the story – to the best of my knowledge – water is not able to magically permeate solid fiberglass and drip down – the case she described seemed very unlikely. So I took my own shower, and as I did, I marveled at the realization – that water was dripping – cold water, dripping down on my head. I watched with fascination as the water appeared to magically appear in a large droplet above my head, and then drip. There was no apparent source, no hole in the shell – but there were now two witnesses. We might have come to the conclusion that it was a miracle, or a curse. Some kind of plumbers hex? We might have concluded that there was a leak, but that it was invisible, or too small for the naked eye. We might have simply ignored it, accepting it as a newfound fact of life. Cold water must occasionally drip from the ceiling above everyone’s showers. Stubbornly – I insisted that there must be some cause – some reason for this strange phenomenon. Eventually I realized that there was a pinhole leak at the top rear of the shower head. It was spraying an incredibly fine stream of water up toward the top of the shower – where it pooled, and then succumbed to gravity.
2. Identify – clarify – research Question the evidence Hypothesize and test solutions
3. Critical thinking is a skill that, when absent, contributes to the rise of recent phenomena like runaway fake news stories or hacking of government and corporate computers, and costs companies dearly in law suits, fines, penalties, and failed projects. The skill of critical thinking in modern business is often described as desirable when asking employers what it is that they are looking for in new hires (Hart Research Associates, 2013). Employers lament the inability of new employees to think critically and solve problems creatively – placing the blame firmly on the high school or college training of the incoming employees. In their article “Eight Habits of Effective Critical Thinkers”, Guinn & Williamson identify several qualities that clearly identify why critical thinking skills are so desirable (Guinn & Williamson, 2017). Among the behaviors identified are that critical thinkers are ‘more concerned about getting it right, than being right’ and ‘avoid the rush to judgment’. The trick to cultivating these admirable traits in employees is actually in training and encouraging a solid foundation in critical thinking. Learning how to think more effectively leads to better decision making and job performance.
4. We often assume that when two events are related in one way, they must also be related by cause. We confuse coincidence with cause. Just because two things connect or coincide, doesn’t mean that one caused the other. At other times you might find that emotion plays a subtle role. Most of us use phrases like “my luck ran out” and “I’m due for a win” when usually there is no ultimate relationship between your odds of success in the current venture than in the prior. We call this the gambler’s fallacy. One example of the influence of the gambler’s fallacy interfering with decision making was documented in a recent publication from the National Bureau of Economic Research (Chen, Moskowitz, & Shue, 2016). The article identifies a pattern of behavior among professionals that demonstrates application of the gambler’s fallacy to successive decision making patterns. In essence, when a professional makes a series of topically or conceptually similar decisions (on independent cases), they are more likely to invert positive or negative recommendations in the wake of a series of prior recommendations. If they made a series of positive loan recommendations, the likelihood of a negative recommendation increases, even when a negative recommendation is not warranted by the data. The team found the same pattern in baseball umpires calling strikes, and immigration workers recommending asylum. Just as people falsely believe that if they’ve flipped a coin twice, and got heads both times, they are more likely to get tails on the next flip. Of course that is the whole point of the gambler’s fallacy. The odds remain 50/50 no matter how many times you flip the coin. But the fallacy is deeply ingrained in the ‘beliefs’ and emotional reality of most people. The research team also found that the more experienced employees were less likely to suffer the effects of the gambler’s fallacy – suggesting that less experienced employees were more likely to include emotion and instinct in their decision making than more experienced employees (Chen, Moskowitz, & Shue, 2016).
5. Identify – clarify – research Question the evidence Hypothesize and test solutions
6. Let’s play a game … http://www.p0qp0q.com/gamblersFallacy05/
7. What about the case of mortgage approvals? Are there roles of approval, permission, evaluation – judgement calls that fall on people in your organization? Does critical thinking process make a difference in this process?
8. Identify – clarify – research Question the evidence Hypothesize and test solutions
9. Identify – clarify – research Question the evidence Hypothesize and test solutions
10. Identify – clarify – research Question the evidence Hypothesize and test solutions
11. Identify – clarify – research Question the evidence Hypothesize and test solutions
12. Landscapes in learning are changing rapidly. Perhaps part of understanding how critical thinking can apply is in examining how evolving tools in the landscape. Check out a demonstration of Adobe Captivate Prime - our fantastic new LMS for business training – right now.