Think About It!

Have you ever thought about how we think, particularly the kind that leads to decisions? What drives important decisions? How do we know if we made the “right one”? As we enter into the New Year, how will we decide how to navigate ourselves and our enterprises successfully?

How we approach this tends to fall into two major categories (with some dangerous variations within). First, there’s the type of thinking that comes from experience. We observe and experience, develop some pattern describing the experience and tuck it away for reference. When we believe we recognize the pattern, we pull that memory out and make some conclusion about what is in front of us. Some people can store lots more patterns than others, have longer memories and can capitalize from that. It’s called inductive thinking and people with “good” inductive thinking can market that as experience. Hiring practices validate that the marketplace places a positive value on that. Experience is not always good, nor is experience a sure bet, so some further prodding and poking is usually a good idea. There are some areas where inductive thinking can be very valuable, particularly when there is little time available for decision making. It is a subjective realm, nonetheless.

There is another kind of thinking that has to do with the world of math and data and science (real science, not the subjective pretenders…). It requires evidence that is measurable and leads to the quantitative practices where many people will reach the same conclusions when presented with the same data. This kind is deductive thinking and there are lots of professions and methodologies that are built upon deductive thinking. It’s very powerful, learnable and very scalable. It too has limitations in that the person who engages in deductive thinking must learn how to do it correctly and not all of us learn or remember well. Experience here is important insofar as we can use it to demonstrate competence in the applications of the rules and tools. It is supposed to be the objective realm, subject to our ability to measure correctly. Memory also plays a role here. I would be challenged to apply much of what I learned in engineering school decades ago with any confidence.

Variations of the two types of thinking, comingling, and the influences of biases are always at play, so certainty or absolute correctness is elusive. There is however a dangerous type of thinking we may all be subject to. It’s called wishful thinking. We know it well and if we are practitioners in it, we now it’s capability to disappoint. We bring to bear what we have in deductive and inductive capabilities and we put the right bit of optimism and conjure really great scenarios. Sometimes wishful thinking blinds us to lots of really good inductive signals and deductive facts along the way. Some misapply the meaning of positive thinking to the process and don’t survive to tell about it.

So what is the right mix for the upcoming year? We know that there has been a lot of change amiss. The financial rules of engagement have been rattled by poor inductive, pseudo-deductive and far too much wishful thinking so as to create a fair bit of timidity. The way we are interconnected and interdependent in a multi-polar world present us with new data and rules as to what may or may not work. So how do we decide?

• Are we planning for a good year? Why so? Why not?
• Is uncertainty scary or energizing?
• What opportunities does a new playing field present?
• What do we induce, deduce or wish for 2010.

Happy New Year and Good Hunting!