Critical Thinking

Stephen Hawking called the 21st Century the century of complexity. How we deal with complexity will define our enterprises. Making good decisions in complex environments requires critical thinking. We must be able to ascertain facts and analyse those facts in order to understand the variables and technology amidst an ever-increasing pace of change.

Register and pay here, or use the Other Details field to request an invoice:

Target Audience

We all have to make decisions. It is preferable to inform those decisions through critical thinking. We need to be able to see through the complexity of today’s world.

Delegates will preferably have experience of leading or working within teams and be able to share experiences good and bad to enrich the course through interaction.

Course Topics

We will play a board game to enhance critical thinking, comparing good practice to common practice. We will examine human cognition and the factors that influence it. We will study the complication that technology has wrought upon commerce and establish methods to measure the value of competing ideas. We’ll consider methods to simplify decision making through the correct application of critical thinking.

We’ll extend critical thinking to making sure decisions are effectively implemented. Creating a complete strategy, plan and performance cycle is necessary to make sure big decisions and big commitments pay off and we learn as we go.

Course Overview

We increasingly rely on documented justification and recognition of the outcome (confirmation bias) rather than critical thinking when making decisions. Through documented justification we make the mistake of relying solely on the opinions of experienced people, instead of testing different options.

Even in simple situations we run the risk of confirmation bias and group think. This course introduces structure to critical thinking.

Our knowledge level must be sufficient to allow us to identify new unknowns and to develop or commission models to help us understand these unknowns or our inability to accept the risk.

This course aligns decision making with the analysis of fact to provide the clarity that organisations need.

A decision alone is insufficient to achieve an outcome. The decision must be supported by a workable plan for implementation. The combination of analysis, decision and planning is what produces results.

We rehearse the use of these tools, so that delegates leave the course capable of functioning beyond confirmation bias and group think, capable of starting from a blank sheet of paper if necessary, making functional decisions based on critical thinking and workable plans.

Learning Objectives

Thinking critically is about increasing wisdom and seeing through complexity. In this course you will learn how to:

• Carry out mathematical analysis (for dummies)
• Follow the Golden Rules of Analysis
• Understand human cognition and the factors that influence it
• Identify cognitive bias
• Construct a plan and carry out programme evaluation and review
• Apply a repeatable process to simplify decision making, planning and evaluation

Facilitator

Howard Thomas has advocated practical approaches to handling complexity for over 20 years.

He has a unique ability to make the complex clear for his clients and audiences. He combines an in depth technical background with a wide ranging business experience but is probably best known for his critical thinking.

Each delegate will receive a signed copy of Howard’s book Simplicity from Complexity.