Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking

1. Why?

   • Ask Why to Distinguish This from That
   • Ask Why to Get to a Root Cause
     • when we want to understand an event that has occurred: something breaks; a customer cancels his or her account
   • Ask Why to Get to "I Don't Know"
     • Get to "I don't know," but then find out those answers—because you have to know when it comes to critical thinking
   • When you can use it
     • When setting goals: Ask, "Why is that the goal
     • When setting and evaluating priorities: You want to consider why something is a top priority. Ask, "Why is that so crucial?
     • Meetings: Why am I invited? Why shoud I invite them"

2. Empty your bucket

   • In meetings
     • "We tried that before"
     • "Here we go again"
   • Before a conversation:
     • Have conversation with optimism

3. Inspection

   • we need to improve the quality of our services
     • We: Who are we?
     • Need: Is this a need or a want? Use necessary
     • Improve: How do you plan to measure whether quality improves? Be specific
     • Quality: What's the definition of quality?
     • Our services: Does this mean every service
   • Examples
     • EMAILS: We need to get this done faster!" Instead, you might say, "It takes us ten days to do this, and we need to do it in seven days." It's a little bit more precise and certainly clearer.
     • , "We need to reduce our spending on this project." Ask for clarification on reduce—reduce the total spent to what, and over what period? Does reduce mean fewer people or less capital? Does reduce include reducing the scope of the project, too?

4. So What?: To check the importance of something

   • a question to get people to think, to get more answers and alternatives
   • to stimulate thinking when you or others have recognized a problem
   • This question generates conversations about importance, interdependencies, value, relevance, business and customer impacts, and cost and schedule impacts—just to name a few
   • In Meetings: when one individual says something that doesn't seem to be related. Say, "Excuse me, Can you say this in a different way. you've now brought new thinking
   • When the unexpected or unplanned happens:

5. Need or Necesity

   • making it clear why it is necessary for them to accomplish the task.
   • Priority setting:Understanding the need behind an initiative can help in setting priorities
   • Interdepartmental cooperation: When departments are not communicating or cooperating well, look for the lack of a need or for multiple needs
   • Timing and sense of urgency: When you or your coworkers have a different sense of timing or urgency to get something done, then have a needs conversation.